


teeth in the grass

by sunnydaisy



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: All Human, F/M, Slow Burn, Southern Gothic AU, Spooky, but a lot of creepy, haunted house au, minimal to no gore, small rural towns are creepy AF sometimes okay!, the dog is & will be fine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24137971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnydaisy/pseuds/sunnydaisy
Summary: "Doors opening and shutting, footsteps in the hallway with no one around, things disappearing and reappearing around the house. That kind of thing.”or: Caroline Forbes inherits her great-grandmother's house.a southern gothic AU
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Comments: 56
Kudos: 124





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lifetime of gratitude to [alienor_woods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienor_woods) for her cheerleading and sharp eyes; and to [but_seriously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/but_seriously) for listening to me talk about this until I'm blue in the face.

**teeth in the grass**

**chapter one**

* * *

_Outside of Greenwood, MS_

_approximately 100 miles north of Jackson, MS_

“They say the devil went down to Georgia,” the old man muses, his eyes fixed, despite the filmy white coating the pupils, on the brilliant sunset splashing orange across the clouds. “Well, I’ll tell ya, they ain’t never been down here.” He reaches into his shirt pocket for a faded red bandana to wipe away the sweat beading across his forehead. A useless endeavor in the Delta humidity, and one he repeats no less than twenty times a day. “The devil’s always been here, girly.”

The soft creaking of his rocking chair plays staccato against the worn grain of the front porch. “Ask anyone,” he says, voice defensive as the rocking stops with a sharp final note. “I ain’t no liar.”

The front door behind opens suddenly, followed swiftly by the flimsy screen door. “Daddy, ain’t nobody out there. Quit talking to nothin’,” a woman’s voice says exasperatedly, as though repeating an oft said refrain. The old man is quiet, and after a suspicious beat, both the screen and front doors shut with firm _clicks_. 

“‘Course there’s somebody here,” he mutters. The slow rocking resumes, and with it, the creaking. “The devil’s here.”

—

_New York City, NY_

“Another feature on scarves,” Caroline Forbes grumbles irritably to her cubicle mate. “How many does one magazine need to run in a year? How can there _possibly_ be that many ways to wear a freaking _scarf_?”

Elena Gilbert swivels in her seat and points at Caroline with her pen. “At least you got a feature, Forbes. I’m over here copy-editing Kayleigh Patterson’s story on going from brunette to blonde to back to brunette, and I swear _to God_ ,” Elena leans forward, “If I have to read the phrases ‘beachy waves’, ‘blondes have more fun’, or ‘caramel highlights’ one more _goddamn_ time, I will stab my eyes out with this pen.” 

Caroline arches an eyebrow. “Kinky.”

Elena rolls her eyes, spinning her chair back towards her desk. “Needless to say, I would take the scarves shit off your hands in a heartbeat.” She whirls back around, suddenly electrified. “Speaking of _kinky_ and scarves—”

“Don’t even think about it,” a new voice warns; both Caroline and Elena automatically straighten at the sound. “I expect the both of you to produce the quality of articles that are expected of writers here at _Town and Home_.” Their assistant editor, Whitney, fixes Caroline with a look that makes her wonder just how much she overheard. “Caroline. Natalie wants you in her office in five.” And, having laid down those ominous words, she turns and glides away on a cloud of Chanel, the sound of her Loubitouns clicking sternly on the floor. 

As soon as she’s gone, they exchange looks before Caroline slumps low in her seat, exhaling a breath she didn’t even realize she had been holding. “Fuck,” she says, blowing escaped wisps of hair out of her face. 

“Yep,” Elena agrees. 

—

The long-whispered rumor around _Town and Home_ is that Natalie Gallagher, having cut enough throats and stepped over enough bodies in her perfect Givenchy pantsuits to the editor position at the magazine, had, upon winning the job, immediately overhauled the design of the spacious office on the twenty-eighth floor so that it echoed that of Anna Wintour at _Vogue_. The existing staff, thoroughly scandalized as wood paneling had been stripped to reveal the pale sheetrock underneath, had wondered amongst themselves if she even realized that _Town and Home_ wasn't a fashion magazine at all, but in fact, a _lifestyle_ magazine. 

When she had installed plush cream carpet, their suspicions were confirmed—Natalie Gallagher had _no idea_. 

It is with this in the back of her mind that Caroline steels her nerves and walks towards Natalie’s corner office. She hesitates outside of the door and smooths the lines of her thin blouse before knocking once. 

“Come in,” Natalie calls out, and Caroline, feeling very much like she’s walking the metaphorical plank into shark-infested waters, enters.

“Caroline,” Natalie says as Caroline sits down as gracefully as she can muster in the gunmetal grey chair across from the large glass desk, “I know you’re very busy doing the—” she glances down at a few pages resting in front of her and taps her pen against them, “scarves feature, but—” her gaze sharpens and Caroline sits up ramrod straight. “Katherine, on the travel desk, has just left us for her maternity leave, which means I’ve found myself with approximately five blank pages between Ideas for a City Rooftop Garden and Ariana Grande’s makeunder in the November issue.” 

It takes all her self control to not blurt out immediately that she’ll do it, that she’d walk barefoot on broken glass to not have to write about the versatility of scarves again. Caroline swallows, counts to seven, and says, in her easiest, breeziest tone, “How can I help?”

Natalie’s grin is all bared white teeth. “I do so love a team player,” she says smoothly. “Scope: outside the city, preferably personal, with a bit of flair.” She looks over at her iMac screen, lensless glasses sliding down her nose. “Proposal on my desk by Friday.” 

Caroline is so busy nodding furiously, her pen scratching at her notepad, that it doesn’t occur to her until she’s almost back to her desk that it’s already Wednesday afternoon.

—

The idea comes from her mother, off all places.

“We read Mimi’s will today,” Liz Forbes says from hundreds of miles away, her face a pale blue in the glow of Caroline’s MacBook Air. “You were, uh, —well. Mentioned.” 

Caroline looks up so quickly that the bones in her neck pop. 

As a kid, she had spent every summer with her great-grandmother in the tiny town of Avery, Mississippi. Caroline vividly remembers sleeping in one of her great-grandmother’s spare bedrooms from early May through mid-August, sweltering when the window unit went out, and counting shooting stars from the tall window in the room that had been deemed hers. She’d been her Mimi’s shadow— _always underfoot_ , Mimi used to say, her face full of affection. 

Right up until that summer between sophomore and junior year when her fifteen-year-old self had decided that she was now much too grown up to be shipped down to the Mississippi delta to tend to pansies and shuck peas on a dusty front porch with an eighty plus year old woman. _I want to go to cheer camp!_ Caroline remembers yelling, and the memory brings color to her face, a splinter of shame wiggling itself under her skin. 

“I was?” she says faintly, fingers tightening around the stem of her wine glass. 

Her mother looks tired, her eyes puffy and shadowed. “Yeah. She, uh, left you the house.”

Caroline freezes, the glass of chilled rose halfway to her lips. She sets it down slowly, her mouth suddenly dry. “ _Hawthorne_ House?” 

“Yeah. Hawthorne House.” Liz runs a hand over her blonde bob, the grey of her roots peeking through. “I didn’t realize you two were still so close. I’m sure it was a blessing for Mimi, after your grandpa and your dad passed.” 

Caroline flushes guiltily. They weren’t close, not anymore. The last time she’d spoken to her Mimi was months ago, to wish her a happy ninety-fourth birthday. Mimi had wanted to chat, Caroline remembers, but she’d blown her off with a promise to call back when she got out of the meeting she was running to. She’d forgotten—the meeting ran long, her subway commute left her hot and tired and sweaty—the list of excuses she had was as long as her arm; but she told herself she’d call back the next day. 

And she hadn’t. 

But she doesn’t say anything. “Anyway,” Liz continues at her silence, “at some point, you need to get down to Mississippi to take possession.” 

“Wait, I have to _move_?” 

“No, no,” her mother reassures her quickly, “the lawyers just need your signature on a few things.”

Her heart sinks. “I can’t use e-sig?”

“It’s Mississippi, Care.” Liz shakes her head, smiling a little. “Maybe in fifty years, you’ll be able to use e-sig, but until then…” she trails off and shrugs. “They’re being as flexible as the timetable allows, but the deadline is May 15. Think you can swing that?” 

She leans forward, her face half-cupped in her palm as she considers the small wall calendar hanging behind her desk. “Um. I think so, I just—ugh, I need to talk to my boss.” Her head drops into her hands and she fights back a groan. “I just got assigned this travel feature, and—”

“Do it on Avery,” Liz suggests. “Didn’t you just say a few months ago that small towns were, and I quote, _all the rage_?” Her mother does finger quotes into the webcam. Caroline nearly chokes on her rose. 

“All the rage in _coming of age films_ , Mother. Not in magazine articles.” Just the thought of pitching the idea to Natalie makes Caroline reach to refill her wine glass. “And even those small towns usually have a hook, you know? Something that pulls the audience’s interest. Avery is _boring_.” 

“Then find an angle,” her mother counters, and she sounds a bit offended. “You know, most of the buildings in Avery were built long before the Civil War, including Hawthorne House. And there’s that old drive-in movie theater off the town square; I think it’s one of the few left actually in operation, which is pretty cool. Oh, and there’s that store that had a smuggling ring in the basement during Prohibition—”

“Okay, Mom,” Caroline cuts in, raising one hand in defeat. “You’ve made your point.” 

“Just pitch it to your editor and just see what he says,” Liz suggests and Caroline wrinkles her nose. 

“She. My editor is a _she_.”

“Good for her,” Liz says with the same air as one might say, _I could not give less of a damn_. “Listen, Care, if you convince _her_ —” she sends a pointed look directly into the webcam, “to let you work from Avery for a week or two, you should fly into Atlanta. Spend some time with Steven. It’s been really hard on him, being alone in the house without your dad. I’m sure he’d appreciate the gesture.” 

Another flash of guilt slices through Caroline. “Yeah,” she mumbles, not able to meet her mother’s eyes through the screen. “Yeah, that’s a good idea, I’ll text him once I know more.” The timer on her phone buzzes, indicating that her very adult dinner of garlic mashed potatoes is ready. “Mom, I gotta go. I’ll keep you posted on what my editor says.”

“Sounds good, sweetie. Give Steven a call, even if you can’t make it by to see him.” Her mother’s face is soft as she waves goodbye into the webcam, and it fills Caroline with a sudden wave of homesickness. She inhales, letting the feeling linger as she tries to remember the last time she even left New York State, much less the last time she was in Virginia. 

Maybe, if Natalie can be convinced to let her do this assignment, she can rent a car and drive down to Mystic Falls for a few days. Get her head on straight before heading further south—she could fly out of Norfolk down to Atlanta, swing by and see Steven—

“Slow your roll, Forbes,” she orders as she opens the oven. “Get the article approved first.” 

The hardest part. 

—

“I love it,” Natalie declares, her chin resting on her hand as she gazes at Caroline thoughtfully. “City girl goes back to her roots in rural Alabama—”

“Mississippi,” Caroline corrects, but Natalie waves her off, clearly uncaring.

“—rediscovering her family’s past, all in the setting of a small, dying town in a portion of the country completely untapped by coverage. I mean, the potential for richness here is just…” Natalie trails off, tapping her pen against the glass desk. “I’m bumping this from article to feature, Caroline. How long did you say you would need to be there?”

Caroline shifts in her seat. “Um, probably a few weeks, tops, but I think I can probably cut it short if I need to—”

“Absolutely not,” Natalie cuts her off. “I want you down there as long as needed.” Her eyes sharpen behind the black frames of her lensless glasses. “I want to feel as though I _know_ the townspeople, Caroline, as though I’m there _with you_. Do you understand what I’m asking?”

 _Not really_. “Yes, one hundred percent.” 

“Excellent. Tie up any loose ends here, then I want you on the next flight down.”

—

Caroline doesn’t quite follow Natalie’s instructions—the earliest the lawyer in Jackson can see her is in a week, so she rents a car and makes the trek down to Mystic Falls. 

“I don’t understand,” Liz says over the chicken and dumplings she’s made for dinner—Mimi’s recipe, Caroline remembers fondly as she ladles a second serving into her bowl. “How long are you going to be in Avery then? A month? Two months?”

Caroline stirs her spoon in the small ceramic bowl, folding her legs underneath her as she settles into the porch swing across from Liz’s chair. “Her exact words were ‘as long as I need to be.’ Clear as mud.” 

Liz’s forehead wrinkles. “And they’re...paying you? To stay down there and write for an issue that won’t come out until November? Doesn’t seem very fiscally sound, frankly.” 

“Yep.” Caroline sets the bowl down on her lap and does jazz hands, wiggling her fingers as she goes. “That’s the lifestyle magazine industry for ya!” 

Her mother chews slowly, her face thoughtful as though she’s debating on if she really should say what she wants to say. “Not to cast doubt on your editor, who I’m sure is extremely smart and well suited to her position—”

“Sure, we can go with that,” Caroline mutters under her breath. 

“—but I thought the journalism industry was dying. In fact, your exact words when you were listing out the pros and cons of taking this job were: _magazines are dying a slow and painful death_.” Liz laughs a little. “It was in the cons column, if I remember right.” 

Caroline waves her spoon in the air. “Honestly, Mom, I don’t ask a ton of questions. As long as the direct deposit hits, you know? Besides,” she scrapes the utensil around the edges of the bowl to get one last spoonful, “this whole thing was basically your idea. And this way, I can stay down there and deal with house stuff until everything is settled instead of trying to handle stuff remotely.” 

Liz considers her point and nods, though clearly still a bit baffled by it. “There’s peach cobbler for dessert, if you’re craving something sweet.” As she heads into the kitchen, she calls out over her shoulder, “I also dug some old photos of you and Mimi down at Hawthorne House out of the attic. We can go through them later, if you want.”

Her curiosity spikes and she finishes her chicken and dumplings hastily. “Yes, please!” she calls back, unfolding herself and nearly tripping over her feet as the blood rushes back into her legs. 

_Later_ ends up being two helpings of peach cobbler (with ice cream) later, and Caroline’s eyes are threatening to drift shut. “Food coma,” she whines to Liz, who looks entirely unsympathetic. 

“I told you you’d regret that second bowl.” Liz pushes a stack of old Kodak envelopes towards her. “Now, I’m not sure your generation remembers, but hold photos by the edges, Care. Fingerprints.”

“I’m twenty-six, Mother, not _six_.” 

There are far, _far_ more photos than Caroline was expecting. Some are Polaroids, the edges worn so thin by careless handling that Caroline is half afraid they’ll crumple into dust in her hands; others are faded five-by-sevens, with the date stamped in bright orange on the bottom corner. The more faded the photo, the younger Mimi seems to get—the skin of her face smooths, her hair gets longer, and her figure gets trimmer. 

“ _Mom_.” Caroline waves a particularly good find in the air and holds it out for inspection. “Mimi was a total dish! Look!”

Liz leans forward in the oversized plush chair to take the photo from Caroline’s careful fingers. “Oh, that’s a good one,” she breathes, flipping the photo to look for a date. “Looks like 1955 was a very good year for her.” She passes it back to Caroline’s eager grasp. 

In the photo, Mimi’s blonde hair is cut so that the curls at the bottom bounce at the sharp line of her jaw; her coat dress is nipped in at the waist, and from what little Caroline can make out from the stark black and white, it looks to be black or a similar dark shade. Green maybe—she remembers that Mimi loved a deep emerald, remembers running her small child’s hands over a line of soft green dresses hung neatly in a closet that smelled faintly of mothballs. 

Mimi is _tiny_ in the photo, Caroline notes with a bit of envy, her ankles looking like delicate little things in her high heels. There’s only a small boy in the photo with her—Grandpa Martin, looking all of five years old and full of mischief. She can tell from the photo alone he’s nearly vibrating with pent up energy, his eyes trained fully to some scene off camera while Mimi’s grip looks to be deathly tight even from seventy-odd years in the future. 

“Who knew the delta could get that much snow,” Caroline comments, her eyes traveling from Mimi’s fur muff to the wintery ground beneath her round-toed heels. 

Liz snorts as she flips through the box on the coffee table. “Not much use for that fur in Mississippi now, I’ll tell you that much. It was ridiculously hot last week and the lawyer’s office had just lost their air conditioning unit.” 

“Well that sounds like hell,” Caroline mutters, carefully placing the photo back in its weathered envelope. 

Her mother shoots her a grin. “Enjoy,” she says, tipping her near empty glass of red wine in Caroline’s direction. “I’m heading to bed. Early deputy meeting tomorrow. Sleep tight, sweetie.” She leans forward to kiss Caroline’s forehead, and her scent lingers in the air long after she vanishes into the back bedroom. 

Caroline doesn’t immediately follow, instead choosing to remain seated on the couch and continuing to look through the old photos. She gets a tiny thrill whenever she comes across one of herself with her father, or with Mimi. 

Her great-grandmother, called Mimi because toddler Caroline had shrieked it at her at every turn, a baby’s bastardization of _mine-mine_ , had been widowed when her son was just a child, and both her son and grandson had passed on before her too. It had always struck Caroline that Mimi must’ve suffered from a particularly nasty strain of rotten luck, to have her most beloved ones leave her behind with so many more years yet to live. 

She had ended up, if Caroline’s math is right, outliving her husband by nearly sixty years, her only son by nearly thirty, and her only grandson by eight. 

A curse, Liz Forbes had called it once.

—

Caroline awakens the next morning to an email from Natalie bearing the subject line _Urgent: Have You Arrived_ with nothing in the email body. Groaning, Caroline pushes herself out of her childhood bed and lets an exasperated breath hiss through her teeth. “ _Have I arrived_ , Jesus H Natalie, at least Google how long it takes to get from New York City to Avery, Mississippi before you send me stupidass emails—”

Her scalding shower helps to slake a little of her irritation, but some still lingers. She’d been planning to spend a few _days_ here, not a wham-bam-thank you ma’am of a visit—it feels like she’s barely even seen her mother. 

“This is why they’re paying you, Forbes,” she reminds herself as she hauls her suitcase onto the bed. At least, she thinks with no small amount of disappointment, she’d hardly unpacked. 

Small mercies. 

—

Seven hours total travel time and Caroline is finally, finally—

—at Steven’s door. 

She’s exhausted, it’s _raining_ , she’s resolved to be on the road before sunup tomorrow morning for the six hour drive ahead of her, and somehow her nervous system still finds the energy to kick up its flight or fight response at the sight of the neat little mailbox with _Forbes_ stenciled on one side. 

The last time she was here was for her father’s funeral. 

Her hand is rising to knock on the door when it swings open, revealing Steven, who looks—

—incredibly displeased with her—

“Caroline,” he scolds, reaching for her suitcase and ushering her in with a wary glance at the dark clouds that have gathered in the distance. “You should have called me to come pick you up at the airport, did you rent a car? You know they gouge you something _awful_ at airports, I do hope you’re billing the rental fee back to your office—”

As he leads her inside, she reflects on just how impossible it is to not like Steven—though at sixteen, she had tried her damndest. Caroline feels her face heat at the memory and, pushing it away, sends him a grateful smile as she dodges the pack of dogs that crowd her upon entering the house. 

“Atticus!” Steven commands, and when the largest of the dogs sits immediately, the rest follow his lead. They look up at Caroline with large, soulful eyes and she rolls her own. 

“Quit begging,” she tells them with mock disapproval. “It’s unbecoming of Southern gentlemen.” 

“Your mom tells me you’re doing an article on Hawthorne House,” Steven calls out from the kitchen; she can hear the opening and closing of the cabinet doors and it makes her heart constrict. Steven was never the cook in this house. 

“Yep. Well, not so much Hawthorne House itself, but like, a _returning to your roots_ piece.” She makes a face at the stupid wording Natalie had insisted on using. “My editor is super excited for it, so y’know. Pressure’s on.”

“You’ve always been a fabulous writer, Caroline. I’m sure her confidence is well-founded.” Steven appears in the foyer. “I hope white is okay,” he says, holding out a dark green bottle for her approval. When she nods, he disappears back into the kitchen, though this time she follows him and four dogs follow her, their nails clacking against the tile floor. “I...attempted to make you dinner, but I’m afraid the outcome was less than appetizing.” His nose wrinkles. “Bangkok Alley should be arriving momentarily.” 

“Thai sounds perfect,” she tells him honestly, accepting the glass he offers. “I hope you don’t mind if I have an early night, Steven, I’m leaving in the morning and that drive—”

“Is ghastly,” he finishes for her, nodding in understanding. His eyes twinkle at her. “Believe me, I remember. I hope you’ve downloaded several audiobooks for the stretch after Birmingham.”

Caroline groans, her head dropping into her hands. “ _Ew._ God, don’t remind me.”

Once the pad Thai has arrived, Caroline says casually as she chews her noodles, “Did you and Dad...go to Hawthorne House a lot? After I stopped?”

Steven considers her thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t say it was often. Probably twice a year, maybe a little more if we thought your Mimi sounded blue. In all honesty, she came to stay here more often than we went there.”

Caroline blinks in surprise. “Really?” And she knows it’s silly, because obviously Mimi had left Hawthorne House to take up residence at Butterfly Gardens Nursing Home in Jackson. But it seems wrong, somehow—the thought of the old antebellum house sitting empty and silent, its windows as dark as lifeless eyes.

It makes her shiver. 

Steven doesn't seem to notice. “You know,” he muses as he swirls his wine, “Between you, me, and the fencepost, I never liked that house.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Why not?”

He shrugs and helps himself to more pad Thai. “It’s supposed to be haunted, you know.”

Her fork clatters loudly to her plate; the sharp sound makes the dogs jump up. “ _What?_ ” 

Steven seems surprised that she’s surprised. “Sure. You know, with its history and all the things that have happened there.”

Caroline stares at him blankly. “I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about,” she says, brow furrowing. “What history? What things?”

He waves his own fork at her nonchalantly before scooping up more noodles. “According to your father, several...er, branches of the family tree met rather...untimely ends, shall we say, in or around Hawthorne House.” He shrugs again. “But I never independently verified this information with your Mimi, so please do take it with a grain of salt. Bill did have a flair for the dramatic.” Steven sends a pointed gaze to where she had dropped her fork, but she barely notices. 

_No way._ Not Hawthorne House, the setting of some of her most favorite and treasured memories. “That can’t be true. I’ve never heard that.” 

But, Caroline reflects, when would she have been told? Her father had died nearly a decade ago, and their relationship had been in the infancy of its rediscovery. She’d spoken to Mimi only sporadically for years, in birthday and Christmas phone calls, and who tells ghost stories to their high school aged great-granddaughter? That left Liz Forbes, who, while a favored former in-law, was still not a blood relation. No, her mother probably wasn’t even aware. 

Steven fixes her with a look. “Not even how your Mimi, tough as nails though she was, outlived two generations of Forbes men? Three, if you count your great-grandfather?” There’s no bitterness in his voice, but she feels a twinge of it within her own heart all the same. 

Caroline goes still. “My great-grandfather died from the flu. Which wasn’t exactly uncommon back then.”

“True,” he agrees, and she thinks he might be fighting off an indulgent smile.

“Papaw died in a car crash,” she continues, and again, Steven offers no argument, simply nodding. “And Dad...” she trails off, and her stepfather looks down at the table, neither of them willing to press any further on that particular bruise. “A run of really shitty luck,” she finishes lamely. “Mom called it a family curse once, but _ghosts_? Ghosts aren’t real.”

Steven doesn’t look entirely convinced. “As I said, all of this information came third hand—from Mimi to your father to me,” he says. “Maybe somewhere down the line, the stories got tangled, but what I can tell you is that your father didn’t understand how Mimi could stand to live by herself there.” He shudders, and Caroline thinks vaguely that her father wasn’t the only with a flair for the dramatic. “Doors opening and shutting, footsteps in the hallway with no one around, things disappearing and reappearing around the house. That kind of thing.” 

“ _I_ never noticed anything like that,” she insists, swirling the last sip of her wine in the glass before downing it in a gulp. “And I slept there for, like, what has to be years when you add up all the summers together.” 

Steven nods once, as though acquiescing to her superior knowledge. “I’m sure you would have noticed something if it was actually haunted, my dear.”

And she _would_ have. 

Wouldn’t she?

“Regardless,” he cuts in, interrupting her racing thoughts, “Haunted or not, I refuse to let you drive to Hawthorne House in that awful rental. Your dad’s car is still in the garage. You’ll take it.” 

The knowledge that he still has Bill Forbes’ car throws her, chasing away everything else. “You—why do you still have Dad’s car?”

The smile that ghosts across Steven’s face sends a pang through her heart. “Couldn’t bear to sell it,” he tells her honestly. “He would want you to take it. Leave that thing with me, and take the car.” 

—

Caroline ends up caving the next day, handing over the rental car keys to Steven and accepting the use of her father’s as they stand in the pale light of the morning sun. When she offers to pay him some variation of the rental fee, Steven looks downright offended over his steaming cup of coffee. The rain had swept through overnight, leaving behind a cloudless sky and a thick blanket of humidity.

“He would have insisted,” Steven says, waving her off. “Why waste the money when there’s a perfectly good car sitting useless in my garage?”

But she draws the line when he tries to send her off with one of his dogs. 

“Just take Finch,” he coaxes, and upon hearing his name, one of the dogs curled up near the front door perks up, his tail thumping interestedly against the floor. “He’s very well trained, and you know, I worry about you all alone in that tiny backwoods town. They’re very...insular down there. And it’s been quite a while since your last visit.” 

Her first instinct is to defend Avery, but it dies quietly behind her teeth. He isn’t wrong—outside of the walls of Hawthorne House and away from Mimi’s protective wing, she had felt a bit like an outsider once she had gotten old enough to notice. 

“You’re not wrong,” she concedes finally, “but what if he got out and got lost? I’d never forgive myself.”

Steven waves off her concern dismissively. “He is _very_ well trained, Caroline. Finch!” he calls out, and the dog stands, bounding over to where they sit, his tongue panting happily. “There’s a good boy, sit for your big sister—” Finch’s rear plops down obediently next to her and Caroline is charmed despite herself. 

“How about this,” she bargains, scratching under Finch’s chin, much to the dog’s delight, “give me, like, a week or a two on my own, and if I need protection of this _very good and ferocious boy_ —” she punctuates the endearments with coos and more scratches, this time behind Finch’s ears, “—I’ll give you a call, and you can meet me in Birmingham for a doggy drop off.” 

“Deal,” Steven says agreeably. 

Finch’s head has swiveled between the two of them, and his expectant dark eyes tug at her heart. 

“Two weeks, my boy,” she hears Steven say comfortingly to him as she loads the car. “You’ll see her in two weeks.” 

—

Caroline makes it through Birmingham without incident, thanks in large part to the backlog of podcasts she had downloaded to distract from the boring _sameness_ of the interstate. She counts no less than eight Alabama Highway Patrol cars once the city is in her rear-view mirror and sets her cruise control to seventy-five.

The road turns bumpy when she crosses into Mississippi, the asphalt a patchwork of various shades of grey and black, the mismatched concrete evidence of where potholes have been poorly filled. 

She doesn’t head south for Jackson just yet, instead continuing straight west towards Greenwood, towards Avery. The exit signs tick off names that Caroline hasn’t thought of in years—Columbus, Winona, Coffeeville—each of them a reminder of the dwindling miles that remain between her and Hawthorne House. 

It isn’t until she sees the tiny, sun bleached sign for Avery, hanging just below the larger, more official sign for Greenwood, that she turns her podcasts off, her grip tightening ever so slightly on the steering wheel. She takes the exit, something like apprehension building in her chest. 

The old silo is still standing, and for some reason, its presence jutting into the sky is comforting. As a child, Caroline remembers the silo marking her internal countdown to their imminent arrival to Hawthorne House, to _Mimi_. The kudzu has worked at claiming the tall cylindrical structure, climbing up the walls and wrapping itself around the brick until the majority of the silo has been swallowed by its green vines, but the dome at the top still gleams a rusty red in the mid-afternoon sun. Feeling suddenly, inexplicably light, Caroline rolls her window down halfway, and scrolls until she finds a sunny, bright playlist to stream through her aux cord. 

Every half mile, she finds herself remembering someone she hasn’t thought about in _years_ —Ms. Mavis, the antiques dealer who chain smoked and watched _The Young and the Restless_ on a tiny tube tv whose screen was less picture and more static; Mr. Rusty, the town drunk who somehow sobered up every morning by six am to pilot his ancient crop duster across the various crops growing the fields; Rosemarie Foster, who, rumor had it, had been the other woman of a state senator down in Jackson. All of their faces flicker across Caroline’s memory as she speeds down the tiny, barely paved highway. The remnants of gravel kick up in her wake, white dust flying behind her. 

She inhales deeply, the thick, wet air and the flowery scent of honeysuckles filling her lungs to capacity. The humidity weighs the air with water, but there’s enough of a breeze that Caroline isn’t too concerned yet with the damp, though she’s certain that within a week, she’ll be singing a different tune. She hadn’t bothered packing her hair straightener for a reason. 

The kudzu has grown wild. It marches up the tree trunks and covers the ground, a tiny ocean of green leaves and vines. Caroline slows as she approaches the nearly invisible turn onto the driveway for Hawthorne House. She’s never made this drive herself, never had to squint at the road to find the slight dip where asphalt turns to gravel. The realization makes her turn the music down until it’s barely audible, the sound of the gravel crunching beneath the car tires easily drowning it out. 

The driveway is still lined on both sides with large, leafy magnolia trees, their branches heavy and long enough to reach out and touch each other over the roof of the car, nearly blocking out the sunlight. The line of trees breaks at the beginning of the front yard, where a weeping willow tree hunches over a small, wrought iron bench, nearly eclipsing it from view. The tree is far bigger than Caroline remembers, the slender branches dangling down to graze the grass that struggles to grow beneath its shade. She parks the car near it and hops out eagerly, making her way over towards the weeping willow. 

She had named it Mother Willow, she remembers, nostalgia panging. The product of watching _Pocahontas_ every day for an entire summer, and her delight upon discovering that the tree in Mimi’s front yard was the same kind as the one who doled out motherly advice. She had pretended to talk to that tree for weeks, and Mimi had gamely played along, pretending to hear the tree talk back.

There is a sudden tightness in her throat and Caroline swallows hard before taking a deep, steadying breath. It’s a mistake: the scent of magnolia blossoms is nearly overpowering, and threatens to throw her backwards in time. Mimi had never worn perfume, she remembers with sudden, crystal clarity, because she hadn’t needed to: the scent of the magnolias clung to her clothing, her hair, her skin. She had trimmed the large white blossoms from their branches and set them in vases around the house, and Hawthorne House had smelled like it too. 

Squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw, Caroline turns slowly, letting herself take in the full view of the house. 

Nothing could have prepared her for it. 

From an outsider’s perspective, she supposes it looks much like any antebellum house—the large white columns in the front that extend up to the point of the roof, the wrap around porch with its smaller white columns holding up the floor of the second story’s porch, the faded blue shutters that bookend each tall window, the stone steps that lead up to the front door—all hallmarks of the standard sort of architecture littered across the southeast. At the far end is a porch swing, and two old rocking chairs, their paint chipping, frame the front door.

But Caroline knows that her father built the bird house that stands several feet down from the house, knows that her grandfather had painted the shutters to a deep navy that now appears as a washed-out soft blue. She knows that Mimi had planted the pansies that still bloom in the flower beds around the front steps, and remembers helping water them as a child, a mason jar clutched in her small fist. 

Slowly, as though the house is a living thing that might spook should she approach it too quickly, Caroline makes her way towards the front door. The wind chimes—hung, she knows, by her grandmother years before her father had been born—clink lightly together, humming in the breeze. 

The porch is covered in a thick layer of dust, and there are more than one discarded snake skins lying haphazardly across the planks; Caroline tries not to gag. She reaches for the storm door and pulls—

Locked.

“You’d be Caroline, then?” a woman’s voice rings out. Caroline nearly jumps out of her skin at the sudden intrusion on her silence, whirling on the voice before relaxing. She hadn’t even heard the woman approach. 

“Yes, hi,” Caroline says, collecting herself, though her heart rate has yet to come down. “Sorry, I don’t know why I just expected it to be unlocked.” She gives a small, self-deprecating laugh before sticking her hand out. “Caroline. Um, I think maybe I spoke to you on the phone? You must be with Jean’s office.” The woman doesn’t confirm or deny, so Caroline continues hesitantly, “The realtor? Bringing the keys?” 

Something passes across the woman’s face, and she nods once. “I’m Mary,” she says shortly, and her handshake is calloused but firm. It’s then that Caroline sees a small girl with pigtail braids peek out from behind Mary’s long dress. 

Caroline bends down slightly, holding her hand out again. “Hi,” she says kindly. “I’m Caroline. What’s your name?”

The little girl eyes her hand before hiding her face in Mary’s hip. 

“She’s Hannah Grace,” Mary says, voice softening just a bit. “A little wary around strangers, but we’re getting there.” Her tone turns brisk, and Caroline can’t help but appreciate her no-nonsense approach. It reminds her, achingly, of Mimi. “Now, here are the keys—” she holds out the handful of brass in her hand for Caroline to take, “—the big one is to the front door, the silver one is the glass door, and that small brass one is to the shed out back behind the pond. I wouldn’t recommend going out to the shed alone, now—”

“Why?” Caroline asks quickly, tensing. “What’s in the shed?” 

Mary fixes her with a sharp look. “Snakes, I’d imagine. The cottonmouths have been particularly nasty so far this year and we’re not yet out of spring. The pond out back also tends to attract the occasional water moccasin, and they sometimes take refuge there.”

 _Right_. “Of course,” Caroline mumbles, feeling slightly chastised at her ignorance. 

“There’s not a lick of food in the kitchen,” Mary continues, as though Caroline hadn’t said a word. “So I’ll imagine you’ll want to go to market and stock up before you get too comfortable.” She looks down at that little girl still hanging shyly behind her. “We’ll be off then, Hannah Grace” 

“Right, of course,” Caroline agrees, her eyes sliding distractedly to the drive. “And please tell Jean that I’ll call her once I get settled.” Realization hits as the pair turn towards the bend in the driveway. “Wait, did you—did you _walk_ here? Please, I can give you a ride home—”

“We’ve not got too far to go,” Mary interrupts firmly, taking Hannah Grace’s small hand in her own. “But thank you for your kind offer.” 

Caroline doesn’t watch them go, instead turning back towards the front door, the keys heavy in her hands. When she turns back, the pair of them are gone. 

—

Caroline can’t say how long she stands on the front porch, the warm breeze occasionally ruffling her shirt and lifting her hair from her shoulders. The only sound is the song of the wind chimes, and the rustling leaves that surround her. She’d forgotten just how _quiet_ it could get out here, miles away from anything. 

“Alright,” she says aloud, meeting the eyes of her reflection in the glass door and nodding sternly. “Big girl pants, Forbes.” 

The lock takes some wiggling, but gives way eventually, and the screen door still creaks as it reaches the halfway open point. She had forgotten that, and just how heavy the solid oak front door was. 

The dust that kicks up as she enters makes her eyes water, her nose stinging. Caroline reaches for the light switch she knows is on the wall right next to the door, but the bulbs don’t spark. Sighing, she pulls her phone out of her back pocket and starts a note— _get electricity turned on_. Wrinkling her nose, she adds under it _and water._

Nothing has changed since she was last here, nearly a decade ago. The worn couch is still across from the brick fireplace, the white deer antlers still hung above the mantle that holds several small frames. There is an old antique secretary directly next to the front door, with a comically modern plastic quill pen from Mount Vernon sticking out of an old brass ink bottle. Caroline had bought it for Mimi in the fourth grade, and the sight of it still sitting in the small bottle tugs at her heart. 

Not for the first time since her trek southward from New York, she wonders _why_ she hadn't made more of an effort to keep in touch with her great-grandmother. Teenage foolishness had long worn off, and yet she still hadn’t bothered to give her but an occasional call. 

Sighing heavily, Caroline pushes the regret aside and heads for the kitchen—

“Oh _God_ ,” she exclaims, rearing backwards away from the doorway, one hand coming up to cover her nose and mouth. 

Something has _died_ in this room, the scent of it hitting her nose like a freight train. Her hand isn’t enough to keep it out, so she pulls the collar of her shirt up to cover the lower half of her face even as she tries not to inhale through her nose. Unable to bear it any longer, she backs out of the room, waving her hand in front of her face in an effort to disperse the horrible smell. 

Coughing into her palm, she goes back outside, sitting down in one of the rocking chairs and trying not to gag. 

“Okay,” she says aloud to the emptiness around her, “first, we get power and water. Then we deal with whatever died in the kitchen.”

—

“What kind of podunk-ass town doesn’t give _receipts_ ,” Caroline grumbles under her breath, shooting her nastiest glare over one shoulder at the small brown brick building behind her. Sure, they were turning on her water and her power, after demanding a _three-hundred-dollar_ deposit and refusing to give her an invoice. Even after she had explained that she would need it to get reimbursement from her accounting department!

She cranks the car, still glaring daggers at the building in front of her, and peels out of the gravel road until she pulls up to a crossroad with an unfamiliar building in one corner.

The fields, stretching as far across the landscape as the eye could see, are the same as they ever were. The short stems are capped by snow white bulbs baking in the late afternoon sun, and the blowing of the wind occasionally picks up enough dust to create a visible, light brown breeze. The occasional house breaks up the monotony, and Caroline surprises herself by being able to list off the last names of the families that live in them: Hawkins, Pinckney, Hamilton, Brown, and the last house she’s pretty sure belongs to the Willards. 

The bar though—that’s new. _Number Seven_ , the faded yellow sign reads. Caroline’s forehead crinkles as she strains her memory, trying to place what had been here previously. It wasn’t Rodney’s General—that she had passed on her way to Hawthorne House, and it wasn’t the old post office, the burned-out skeletal remains of which still stood (barely) at the edge of town. The rest of the buildings that make up Avery’s comically small downtown are further down the road at the town square. 

Her eyes narrow in suspicion at the small building with modest signage. How likely was it that someone _new_ had come to Avery, Mississippi? And on top of that—to start a _bar_ of all things? 

“You gonna go in, or you gonna buy it a drink?” a familiar voice drawls, interrupting her train of thought. A heavy hand claps down on her shoulder.

Caroline manages to hide her groan, but only just. “Fisher Hamilton,” she says in greeting, forcing cheer into her voice. “Long time.” 

“Too long,” Fisher agrees heartily. “Heard about how Ms. Forbes left you that house in her will. Figured you’d be coming down soon enough, and when I saw Bill’s car, well—” He pauses to take a breath before motioning towards the bar. “You goin’ in? C’mon, first rounds on me as a welcome home gift!” He doesn’t wait for her, making his way towards the entrance. Caroline follows reluctantly.

The inside of the building gives her no additional clues as to its past life. It looks like the inside of what she imagines every rural bar in a small Southern town looks like—a long bar top, lined with stools that look as though they’ve seen better days, a menagerie of liquor lining the back wall behind the bartender, booths lining the outer walls, and a jukebox near the door. On the back wall, near the restrooms, hangs another sign, a replica of the one outside: _Number Seven_. 

Curiosity wins out over pride as she sits down next to him at the bar top. “Hey Fisher, what used to be here?” 

Fisher pulls the most beat up twenty she’s seen in her life and tosses it down on the bar. “You remember ol’ Jimmy Franklin?”

Her nose wrinkles. “Not...really?” 

He laughs at that, a deep belly laugh that makes the bar top around him vibrate. “Nah, I don’t guess you would, you bein’ Riley’s age and Jimmy bein’ older than me.” Fisher pauses and she suspects it’s for dramatic effect; he’d always had a theatrical streak. “His daddy owned this building, used to be a gas station. Jimmy turned it into the bar, but let it get real worn down and shit.” He shrugs. “‘Ventually, he couldn’t make the payments on it no more, and an out of towner came in and snapped it up.”

“An out of towner?” Caroline repeats incredulously. 

Fisher nods, wiping at the sweat that is beading along his upper lip. “Quiet fella, keeps to himself mostly. He—” one of Fisher’s pockets begins to ring, and he winces, holding up a large finger. “Mind if I take this? Think it’s my ex-wife…”

“By all means,” Caroline says, but he has already slid off his seat and made his way to the exit. _Fisher Hamilton_ , she thinks with a slight shake of her head. She had played with his little brother Riley as a kid, had even nursed a tiny crush on him for a few weeks during one summer that had painfully concluded with her finding him kissing Lauren Carmichael behind a thick oak tree down by one of the tiny tributaries that sprung off of the Yazoo River.

Lost in thought, she wonders vaguely if the bar is strictly drinks only or if there might be some semblance of bar food when a grease-stained paper menu is slid across the bar top towards her. 

“You’re new,” a smooth, British-accented voice says pleasantly. 

Caroline doesn’t look up. “ _You’re_ new,” she parrots back, inspecting the menu closely. “You must be the out of towner who…” she trails off as she finally looks up. _Oh._ “...bought this place from Jimmy,” she finishes lamely. 

The bartender—bar _owner_ , she amends —holds his hand out. “Klaus,” he says with an easy, far too charming grin. And maybe it’s because everything about him feels wrong—the accent, the perfectly fitted black dress shirt he’s wearing in the heat of late Mississippi spring, the watchfulness hidden in the depths of his blue eyes—but her heartbeat kicks up, and she can’t tell if it’s attraction or warning bells. “And _you_ must be the prodigal daughter returned from exile up North.” 

“Prodigal great-granddaughter,” she corrects. “Caroline.” He holds her hand a beat too long before releasing it and she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. “Why are you so dressed up? This is a dive bar.” She winces—after all, it’s _his_ dive bar—and adds sheepishly, “No offense.” 

“None taken.” He doesn’t answer the question. “Get you anything?”

“Um. Sure.” She glances back down at the small menu and picks the first thing that jumps off the page. “Catfish sounds great.”

“Oh, you’re getting the catfish?” Fisher asks as he re-enters. “Good choice. Caroline Forbes, I do apologize, but I’ve gotta run.” His hand comes up to his heart. “Sara Leigh would sure love to have you over for dinner once you get settled. Don’t be a stranger now, you hear?”

“Of course,” she lies as he nods his goodbye to Klaus and exits once again. She turns back towards the bar and exhales, slumping forward onto her elbows, her chin in her palms. “What is the strongest beer you have?”

That makes him laugh, and her insides warm at the sound as he turns to the fridge behind him and pulls out a bottle with a crown-wearing alligator drawn on one side. “Eight percent alcohol,” he confirms as he pours it into a chilled glass and sets it down in front of her. “You’ll want that with food if you plan on driving yourself home.”

Caroline groans, slumping down further. “Right. That twisty gravel road is probably the Bambi Autobahn right about now.” 

He’s watching her as he cleans a glass, and she allows herself a moment to admire the way the muscles in his forearms move from below lowered lashes. “Bit of a rough day, it seems,” he remarks casually. 

She eyes the beer, then him, and thinks _fuck it_ before taking a long, reckless swig. “You have no idea,” she confides as she sets the glass back down. 

“Try me.” 

That alcohol seriously hits fast, especially on her empty stomach, because it’s on the tip of her tongue to say _I’d love to_ , but she catches herself just in time. She’d left one night stands behind a long time ago, and Avery is the size of her thumbnail—there’s no way she’d be able to avoid him afterwards. Caroline is good at flirting, has _always_ been good at flirting, and what’s more, she enjoys it. But Avery, Mississippi isn’t Manhattan, and it would do her well to keep that fact close at hand. “Okay, but just remember—” she points at him warningly, “you asked for it.”

“Understood,” he says dryly. 

Caroline ticks off her trials and tribulations on her fingers. “First of all, I’m only here because my great-grandmother died and left me her house, and I had to come down here from New York because somehow, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty, the city of Jackson, Mississippi—a state’s _capitol_ , mind you—can’t accept my e-signature on a stack of legal documents.”

His mouth twitches as though he is fighting back a smile. “My utmost condolences on your loss.”

“Thanks. Second of all, said house has no water, no power, and worst of all, _no Wi-fi_ , which is particularly bad for me, considering my job is only letting me stay gone for an extended period of time because they want me to write about—” Caroline gestures around with her free hand, “—this. This place, this town, which I can’t exactly do without _Internet access_.” She slumps, letting her forehead drop onto stacked fists. “And something died in the kitchen, and it smells seriously foul.”

Klaus is no longer fighting back his smile. “You can use the bar Wi-fi,” he offers genially, pulling a napkin from beneath the bar top and scribbling onto it before pushing it in towards her. Caroline sits up straight and turns the napkin over in her hands.

“That’s really nice of you, but it's a temporary solution,” she says. “Oh, also, the county can’t issue me a receipt for the _three hundred dollars_ it took to get the water and power turned back on at Hawthorne House, which really is just the cherry on top of my shit sundae.” Before she can think the better of it, Caroline reaches forward and polishes off the remainder of the beer. “Just an all around outstanding day for me.”

As though on cue, a plate of steaming hot fried catfish appears in front of her. Thank god, because her very valid reasons for not sliding her phone number back across the bar have all but vanished in the haze of the alcohol and she needs something to occupy her hands. She’s pretty sure she’s openly staring at his forearms in the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down dress shirt. 

It’s easily been a decade since she’s had fried catfish, and it’s almost too hot to eat without burning her tongue, but Caroline finds she’s absolutely _starving_. 

“When I first moved here,” Klaus says, his tone idle, “it took me three separate attempts to convince Avery Gas and Water that I was in fact actually living at the address I provided.” He leans back against the back counter. “The third try, they very suspiciously asked what my business was in their town and when I would be leaving.” 

It’s hardly shocking. “Avery doesn’t like outsiders,” she tells him, reaching for a hushpuppy before realizing she didn’t order any. Caroline narrows her eyes. “I didn’t ask for any sides.”

He shrugs, utterly unabashed at being caught. “Would be a terrible blow to business if I let you leave inebriated,” he points out. “Consider it a welcome home gift.”

Caroline chews on her lip. “I’m not, like, really from here. I just spent the summers here,” she confesses, pulling the plate full of hushpuppies towards her as though he might take them back with this revelation. She almost continues, almost spills her guts to this man she’s only just met about how odd it is to be back here in a place that is so synonymous in her mind with Mimi, without her. She only just manages to curb the impulse. 

Klaus slings the rag he had been using over one shoulder. “From one outsider to another, then,” he says, mock toasting her with the glass he had been cleaning before stashing it away under the bar. 

The door opens behind her and his attention shifts to somewhere over her shoulder; Caroline polishes off another hushpuppy before reaching into her bag and pulling out her phone to connect to his Wi-fi. 

Instantly, her phone begins to vibrate, the brightness of the screen illuminating her face in the dim lighting of the bar. She groans as the missed texts and calls begin to roll in, the names flashing briefly behind each other: Mom, Steven, Elena, Natalie—

She taps her email app and searches Natalie’s name. There have been three more emails under _Urgent: Have You Arrived_ , and Caroline pulls up the latest one (the body simply reads “please call ASAP”). Sighing heavily, she slides down off the bar stool and tucks herself into the nearby wall, her phone at her ear. 

Natalie answers on the first ring. “Caroline,” she says briskly, skipping any form of greeting, “I trust you’ve made it safely?”

“Yes, I’m so sorry, I lost signal hours ago and just found Wi-fi—”

“I’ve decided to change your assignment,” the editor cuts in. Caroline’s heart sinks in disappointment. _Great, back to scarves_ , she thinks with no small amount of bitterness, her head dropping back to rest against the wall. And to think, she had been seriously looking forward to digging into Hawthorne House! 

“Instead of a long feature to run in November, I’ve decided you should also send in smaller, bi-weekly pieces about your life in Avondale—”

“Avery,” Caroline mutters, and she can almost _see_ Natalie waving her off dismissively in her mind’s eye. She turns to the bar and snags a napkin, pulling a pen out of her bag to take notes, tucking the phone between her ear and her neck. 

“—with a few tips and tricks included. Do you know what percentage of our subscribers live in rural communities, Caroline?” Caroline opens her mouth reply, her pen tearing through the flimsy napkin surface, but Natalie powers forward. “Thirty two percent. That’s an incredible untapped market, and we would be doing our advertisers a disservice if we didn’t use this opportunity to cater towards that audience.” Natalie pauses. “Do you understand what I’m asking of you?”

“Yes, I think so—”

“Excellent. Of course, it means you’ll be there much longer than previously anticipated; I do hope that’s not an issue.” Natalie pauses briefly, as though waiting for any protests.

“Um, that’s totally fine, I just need to know how long so I can sublet—”

“Through the summer. Send Whitney a note, she can surely house a summer intern in your apartment.” There’s the sound of shuffling papers, then, “I expect your first article to be sent to me by next week’s end.” And with that, Natalie hangs up without a goodbye. 

Caroline straightens, and stares down at her phone in awe before pulling her wallet out and scanning the bar for Klaus. He appears in front of her as though he read her mind, and when he sees her wallet, he shakes his head. “As I said,” he says with a slow half smile that makes her stomach dip, “from one outsider to another.” 

She _blushes_. 

God, maybe she should just leave her stupid phone number. 

—

Caroline resists, but only just, and before she can make any rushed decisions, she leaves the bar, grimly staring down the barrel of having to clean out the dead thing in the kitchen. The town won’t be sending someone to turn on her power or water until the next day, and Caroline refuses, absolutely _refuses_ , to sleep in the same house as something that smells so foul. 

Armed with gardening gloves that extend up past her elbows and several bottles of Clorox, Caroline wraps the only scarf she brought with her around her nose and mouth. “Okay ladies, let’s get in formation,” she says, bouncing on her toes slightly to hype herself up before taking a deep breath and diving headfirst into the kitchen. 

Her first thought is that her scarf is worse than useless, but her second is that maybe somehow, the stench has gotten worse in the span of only a few hours. “Why do you hate me,” she wonders pleadingly aloud to no one in particular—the universe, Hawthorne House, fate. 

Quickly, as though they are live wires, she flings open the doors of the cabinets under the sink, only to find dust covered bottles of household cleaners. God only knows how old they are—Caroline thinks briefly Mimi herself may have bought them before moving to Butterfly Gardens. The thought only needles her with sadness, so she pushes it away and resumes her quest for whatever died. 

“Lower cabinets clear,” she announces to the empty air, standing up so fast that for a moment, she sees stars. 

She opens the cabinet door just to the right of the stove and immediately has to jump back, coughing and waving one gloved hand in front of her covered face. Inside is a very dead and very decomposed possum, clearly having met its untimely end hunting in the shelves for something to eat. 

“Oh _God_ ,” Caroline moans miserably, trying to both not look and look just enough to gently scoot the poor thing into the large black trash bag she’s holding out. As soon as it’s secured in the garbage bag, she ties off the ends and sprints towards the door. “Ew, ew, ew, ew,” she chants as she races outside, blessed fresh air hitting her face even below the scarf. She drops the bag into the garbage can and pulls down the scarf, inhaling deeply. To her surprise, her hands and knees are both shaking.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for country living,” she confesses to the nearby weeping willow. Its branches sway in the breeze, but otherwise, it remains silent to her plight. 

The sun is dipping below the horizon, marking the end of her first day in Avery, and Caroline turns back to look at Hawthorne House as the magnolia trees cast their long shadows against it. 

Her brow wrinkles in confusion. If she didn’t know any better, she’d swear the soft cream curtains hanging in one of the upstairs windows moved. _There_ —the fraying edge of one side pulls away from the middle of the window, as though gripped by invisible fingers belonging to someone who wants to peer out at her trying to catch her breath in the driveway—

Caroline shakes her head firmly, and when she looks again, the curtains are perfectly still. A trick of the light or — “Dead possum fumes,” she decides before squaring her shoulders and heading into the house. 

She needs to light some candles and open some windows before night falls. 

—

**tbc.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every grandmother has a secret recipe they will not share no matter how much you beg (mine made this chocolate cobbler and it was *chef's kiss*).
> 
> [The Devil Went Down to Georgia](https://tasteofcountry.com/charlie-daniels-the-devil-went-down-to-georgia-behind-the-song/)
> 
> [Atticus Finch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atticus_Finch)
> 
> [Honeysuckles & How To Eat Them](https://www.gardenguides.com/13426369-how-to-eat-a-honeysuckle.html)
> 
> [Kudzu](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/true-story-kudzu-vine-ate-south-180956325/)
> 
> [Hushpuppies](https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/hush-puppies/)
> 
> [Abita Andygator Beer](https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/3/1565/)
> 
> [Possum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opossum)
> 
> Feel free to give me a follow on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) or [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The humidity doesn’t disappear with the sun, and even though Caroline has opened every window she can force to budge, the interior of the house only cools a scant amount.
> 
> or: not everything is as it seems. 
> 
> a southern gothic AU

**teeth in the grass**

**chapter two**

* * *

The humidity doesn’t disappear with the sun, and even though Caroline has opened every window she can force to budge, the interior of the house only cools a scant amount. 

Her phone is dead, but given her current lack of access to electricity, she tries to not worry about it too much. It’s probably a much-needed break, she reasons as she strikes another match over one of the tall tapered candles she’d found in the back of the pantry. 

“A digital detox,” she says aloud as the wick catches light. Her magazine-backed Twitter account would be fine going radio silent for a few hours, and it’s not like she has much to promote at the moment anyway.

Outside, the crickets chirp and she swears she hears the soft _who_ of an owl nearby. After so much time in New York, with the sharp, vibrant sounds of the city singing her to sleep, the all-consuming _quiet_ is ringing in her ears. It’s the kind of quiet that spawns whispers and soft footprints across the floorboards; she moves as though she’s risking getting caught, but it’s absurd. She’s alone in the house. 

Caroline catches a glimpse of herself in the candlelight in the long oval mirror in the hallway. “Victorian widow,” she laughs to her reflection, “mourning the tragic and unexplainable loss of her third husband.” She grasps the edge of her shirt and pulls it out slightly to one side in the imitation of a long gown, pretending to curtsy to herself. She grins at herself before continuing on. 

The old hardwood flooring is a symphony of creaking and groaning under her feet as she goes from room to room, opening windows. Mimi’s bedroom door is slightly ajar, and Caroline hesitates just outside of it, staring wistfully. She had briefly considered sleeping in there, but she couldn’t force her feet to carry her across the threshold. 

She had only occasionally slept in Mimi’s bed as a child, usually driven there by bad dreams, and she had taken solace in listening to the even sounds of Mimi’s breathing until she had drifted off herself. The nightmares never followed.

When she had first arrived, Caroline had automatically dragged her heavy suitcase into her childhood bedroom, habit driving her to start unpacking before she blinked and looked down at the tiny twin bed surrounded by pale pink walls. She had groaned aloud at the idea of spending a summer in such a cramped space. 

But now, with the night quickly darkening and the need for a new bedroom more pressing, she can’t force herself to take up residence within Mimi’s. 

“The green room it is,” she announces wearily, lugging her bag behind her down the hall and across the balcony that overlooks the foyer. The house is silent except for the soft sound of her footsteps and the bag scraping behind her on the floor. 

The green room, so nicknamed for the light spearmint paint coating the walls, is her second favorite room in the house solely because the bed—a much more adult queen—is nestled between two large windows, allowing natural light to flood into the room. Even now with the sun having long slipped beneath the horizon, moonbeams shine their soft, hazy light onto the worn rug that lays across the floor. The windows overlook the small pond in the backyard and Caroline halts next to the bed, letting her bag drop from her fingers as she inhales deeply—

—and promptly coughs as dust, _years_ of dust, stirs around her. 

She sends an apprehensive glance down at the bed. The comforter is the one she remembers from childhood, the same pale green as the walls, with fragile lace mapping the edges. Her fingers trace the lace as she stares down at the bed.

“How much dust can one bed possibly hold?” she asks the quiet air around her. There is no answer, though she can hear the breeze pick up from the wind chimes outside. 

The tall windows framing the bed offer a view of the small pond behind Hawthorne House and the woods that stretch out behind it. Mimi had expressly forbidden her from playing in those woods, Caroline remembers fondly, which naturally meant that she had spent the majority of her summer days tiptoeing through the moss-covered earth, eyes wide at the discoveries that seemed to lay behind each branch. The woods are silent and still now, though the breeze ruffles the tops of some trees illuminated by the light reflected off the sky’s half-moon. 

With a tiny affectionate smile, Caroline closes the curtains and turns back to the bed. “It’s just dust, Forbes,” she scolds herself. “You removed a _dead animal_ from the kitchen today, so what’s a little dust?”

And, thoroughly chastised, she pulls the comforter back, giving it a few firm shakes just for good measure.

—

To Caroline’s badly concealed surprise, Avery Gas and Water is at the front door at eight am sharp the next morning. Both of the men nod to her as though she knows them, but neither seem inclined to try to carry on a conversation, for which she’s grateful. She thinks vaguely that their faces may be a bit familiar, but she couldn’t name them if her life depended on it and she’d rather not guess. 

With electricity and water restored, _thank God_ , Caroline plugs in her phone and laptop while she showers. The water pressure at Hawthorne House must have been upgraded since her last summer visit, she notes gratefully as the hot water slides over her stiff limbs. Her shoulders are still carrying the tension from the drive yesterday, and are only just now relaxing under the heat of the water. 

Until—

There’s the sound of footsteps, light and swift, from somewhere outside the bathroom door. 

Groaning, she pulls back the shower curtain slightly. “Did you forget something?” she calls out, unable to keep a twinge of exasperation from leaking into her tone. 

Silence. Her forehead furrows in confusion. “Hello?” 

When there is still only silence, Caroline shakes her head as though to clear it. “It’s the house settling in,” she tells herself firmly, though she quickens her pace with the conditioner, combing her fingers through her wet hair as fast as the sleep tangles will allow. Old houses make noise, she reasons as she towels off and steps onto the bath mat. Besides, they _just_ turned on the water and electricity. 

“That’s it,” she says aloud, relief flooding through her so quickly that she almost has to sit down. That explains the sound—the pipes and the HVAC system haven’t been used in so long that they’re groaning under the unfamiliar strain! She shakes her head at her jumpy overreaction before wringing out the excess water in her hair into the sink. 

As she pads into the green room to get dressed, she wonders if maybe Steven was right, if maybe one of his dogs would be nice company out here in the middle of nowhere. 

Not because she’s scared, she reassures herself as she slides into her denim shorts and ancient flip flops. 

Just for the company.

—

Armed with a fully charged phone and laptop, Caroline sits in the driver’s seat of her father’s old Subaru and lists out her next move. Fingers flying deftly over her phone’s keypad, she types out in all caps: _WIFI_ in her Notes app before cranking the car and heading down the long, shaded drive. The branches of the weeping willow lift in the breeze, fluttering towards the car. 

She curbs her inner flirt’s impulse to go back to Number Seven on the off chance that a particular bartender might be in residence—the clock in the car dashboard reads ten twenty-six am, and not only is that most likely much too early for someone with a nocturnally-based job, she also very firmly reminds herself that this is a _business_ trip.

“Keep it in your pants, Forbes,” she mumbles to her reflection in the side mirror as the car rolls to a stop where the gravel drive connects to the road. 

For a brief moment, Caroline sits there and considers her options with her foot on the brake and her fingers tapping against the steering wheel. The closest big box store is a Wal-Mart in Greenwood and her phone is struggling to maintain its lone half bar of signal, so she’s not exactly optimistic about its connection to Google Maps. She knows—roughly—how to get to Greenwood, and can only hope that there’s enough signage to point her in the right direction. 

With a determined nod, she eases forward—

—and nearly gets side swiped by a rusty red pickup that’s flying down the otherwise empty street. 

Before she can stop herself, her palm slams down on the car horn and she lets loose a flurry of curses that would have had Mimi threatening to wash her mouth out with soap. The red truck speeds by, unperturbed, and Caroline glares daggers at its bumper as it vanishes down the road. 

“Motherfucker,” she mutters one more time, injecting the syllables with as much acid as she can muster, before turning onto the road. 

The drive to Greenwood isn’t exactly interesting, but Caroline finds her attention arrested anyway. There’s nothing around for miles except farmland and forest, broken up by the occasional small church; acres and acres of varying greens that sit stark against the bright blue of a cloudless sky. She rolls her windows down, like she had the day before, and takes a deep breath. 

There’s something just the tiniest bit different about the scent of the air today: drier, and less floral. She supposes that it’s due to the sprawling farmland sweeping past her open window, their silos shiny, modern, and kudzu-free. She’d bet her left tit that none of the homes anchoring those estates had even a whisper of a ghost story. 

But as the car speeds down the highway, she notices that there is far less green than she remembers, and far more white signs sitting precariously close to the road, their red letters shouting _For Sale_. Shaking her head, Caroline gives a low whistle as she flies past the fourth one she’s seen since she noticed and started counting. “Climate change is a _bitch_ ,” she comments aloud to no one. 

It’s another thirty minutes before she’s pulling into a parking spot at the Wal-Mart, and her phone has three glorious bars of service. Fervently, she uses her data and Googles the best modems and routers, saving screenshots to her camera roll before swiping over to her texts. 

There are twelve, _twelve_ texts from Elena, and they start out light—checking to see if she arrived safely, how did it go after seeing the house after so long, was it weird being back in Avery; until the last message, which is just a huffy _call me, bitch_ with an angry red-faced emoji. Wincing, Caroline taps the phone icon next to Elena’s name.

“She lives,” Elena greets instead of a _hello_. “I was this close to asking Natalie if she’d heard from you.” 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Caroline protests as she gets out of the car. “It’s been…” she pauses, searching for the right word. “Weird,” she says finally.

“Well, duh. You’re back in a place with a lot of memories, but you’ve grown up a lot since you were last there, so it’s bound to be disorienting for you,” Elena says practically, and Caroline can hear the sounds of pots clanking in the background. 

“Little late for breakfast, Gilbert,” she comments lightly and when Elena snorts, Caroline can see her friend in her mind’s eye, standing over her stove and whisking furiously at a pan full of eggs. 

“Listen, Forbes. This is brunch, for _myself_ , since my favorite brunch buddy has abandoned me to traipse around the middle of nowhere with the best assignment to come out of _Town and Home_ since they discovered dry bars.” 

“Man, I’d kill for a dry bar,” Caroline says wistfully, snagging a cart and wincing at the bright fluorescent lights. She didn’t even bring a hair dryer with her, resigning herself to let her hair run wild. Although—she perks up as the article idea strikes: _How to Embrace Your Frizz in the Mississippi Humidity_. Though she’d have to, you know, actually embrace her own frizz. She makes a note to stop in the shampoo aisle. 

She’s pulled from her thoughts at the sound of something rattling and pictures Elena shaking a whisk at her. “Well, _I’d_ kill for your feature,” Elena snips back, before sighing into the phone. “Okay, it’s out of my system. I’m done being bitchy and jealous, I promise. Tell me everything!”

And she doesn't know why, but the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “There’s a hot bartender in town. I think he’s new.” 

“ _Really_? You said nothing new ever comes to that town!”

Caroline shrugs, loading her cart up with a few frozen dinners. She should pull out some of Mimi’s cookbooks, she thinks as her gaze wanders over to the produce section, and finally learn how to cook something that isn’t mashed potatoes. “Well, something new did.”

“Okay, and? Don’t be a tease, Forbes, I need _details_.” 

Details—

“Hot, British, bartender,” she recites, and she is struck by how much she _doesn’t_ want to talk about him despite being the one to bring him up mere seconds ago. “That’s all I got.”

She can practically _see_ Elena deflate through the phone. “Fine, then the next time you call me, you better have more information—”

“Such as?”

“I dunno, Care, maybe like what his ceiling looks like? Use your imagination!”

And for the life of her, she doesn’t know why she’s being so cagey about Klaus the British bartender who wears button downs in eighty-degree weather, but she does know that she’s done talking about him. “Who got the scarves feature?”

The distraction works. “Freaking _Savannah_. That bitch wouldn’t know an Oxford comma if it walked up to her naked in Times Square and asked to go to Olive Garden.”

Caroline makes a sympathetic noise. “Sorry, ‘Lena.” 

She can almost hear Elena attempt a dismissive shrug. “It’s fine, I guess. Whit gave me a bunch more copy-editing to do, and she mentioned that Christina MacNeil—you know, up in the editing department?—is leaving to go write for some Instagram influencer’s DIY blog, so I might...I dunno, I was thinking I might apply for her job.”

This quiet admission stops Caroline cold in the cereal aisle. “In editing? But Elena, you’re such a good writer!” Elena doesn’t say anything in reply, so she rushes on, “Let me get my Wi-Fi hooked up tonight and we can FaceTime and figure out who we have to kill to get you an article, okay?”

Elena heaves a sigh that tugs at her heart. “Yeah, okay. That sounds good, Care.” Her tone brightens. “Tell me about the house!”

Caroline pauses before pulling cans of soup into her cart. “Get this,” she says in a low, conspiratorial voice; in her mind’s eye, Elena leans forward eagerly in her seat. “Steven thinks it’s _haunted._ Can you believe that? Like, with actual ghosts!”

She waits expectantly for Elena to laugh, for her to brush it off as the joke it is. Instead, she hears a sharp intake of breath, followed by a quick murmur in a language she doesn’t recognize—Russian-sounding, but not quite. “Elena?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Elena says, and her voice is just a tiny bit shaky. “Sorry, I was just—old habits, I guess.” She lets out a breath. “Don’t...don’t fuck around with that stuff, Care.” 

Caroline can’t help it; an undignified snort escapes her before she can stop it. “You don’t seriously believe in that, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Elena replies, voice low and serious, “but my Bulgarian _baba_ definitely did, and I’m not risking it.” There’s rustling, and Caroline imagines Elena shaking her head furiously. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly _thrilled_ about losing my best friend in this entire godforsaken city for an undetermined amount of time, and by _herself_ to some, like, Deliverance town—”

“That’s a little unfair, they’re not _inbred_ ,” Caroline protests, but Elena rattles on as though she hadn’t spoken, “—I was already worried about you, and now you tell me your ancestral home is straight out of _The Others_? Caroline, promise me you’ll be _careful_.”

And Caroline is so taken aback by the outburst that she’s motionless in the canned goods aisle, mouth opened in surprise. Her first instinct is to crack a joke, to lighten the mood and make Elena laugh, but it fades quickly as she processes just how serious her friend is. 

She isn’t even all that sure what she’s promising—careful _how_? and of _what_?—but it seems Elena’s peace of mind rests entirely on it. “Okay,” she says finally. “I promise I’ll be careful.” 

Elena sighs, and the jittery energy in her voice is not entirely abated. “Get your Wi-Fi set up tonight,” she instructs, “and FaceTime me. I want a full virtual tour of the house.” Some of her earlier enthusiasm has washed away, but they both pretend not to notice. 

“I will,” Caroline promises and they say their goodbyes, leaving her standing motionless next to the soups, under the world’s worst fluorescent lighting, wondering what exactly she’s missing. “Ghosts aren’t _real_ ,” she whispers insistently to the cans of Campbell's chicken and stars. 

And with that, she makes her way determinedly into the gardening aisle. 

She will revive Mimi’s vegetable and flower gardens if it kills her.

— 

It’s a little overwhelming, just how many variations of seeds stare back at her in the gardening section. It’s rows and rows of small boxes and packets, and no matter how hard she scours her memory, she can’t remember if Mimi planted _bell_ peppers or _banana_ peppers—

“Caroline?” a familiar female voice calls out hesitantly. “Caroline Forbes?”

At the sound of her name, Caroline straightens and drops the small box of bell peppers into the cart before turning. There, hovering hesitantly behind a stack of large clay pots, is _Bonnie Bennett_. 

Bonnie Bennett, whose phone number was the only one from Avery that had survived the Great Purge of 2016, who she still occasionally sent a _saw this, thought of you!_ text—Bonnie Bennett, who had been her best friend every summer for the better part of a decade and who had sent a beautiful spray of white flowers to Mimi’s funeral. With the whirlwind the last few days has been, it hadn’t even crossed her mind that she should give Bonnie a heads up that she was back in town. 

A pinprick of guilt needles at her, but she pushes it away and summons her sunniest smile as she opens her arms for a brief hug. “Oh my _god_ , Bonnie! Hi!” 

Bonnie returns her hug and smile tentatively, her face a bit wary. “What’re you doing here, Care?” Her expression clouds. “How’re you holding up with Ms. Margaret’s death?” 

Her great-grandmother’s first name catches Caroline off guard; and she is entirely thrown when she feels her eyes start to prickle with tears. _Shit_. The last thing she wants is to start bawling in the middle of Wal-Mart, but it’s as though her circumstances rear forward and slams into her: Mimi’s death, the empty house, the layers of fucking _dust_ covering everything because no one had taken bothered to take care of it for so long, as though no one had taken care of Mimi in so long— 

Bonnie’s face softens instantly, one hand coming up to stroke soothingly on Caroline’s arm. “That well, huh?” she says gently and Caroline manages a watery laugh before wiping at her lashes. 

“Wow, sorry,” she says, cheeks reddening as she sends a surreptitious glance around the empty aisle. “I think maybe the week just caught up with me. It’s been—” she trails off before exhaling heavily. “A lot.” 

Bonnie tuts sympathetically before glancing down into Caroline’s cart, currently overflowing with TV dinners, a mishmash of produce, a large bag of dirt, and a mix of gardening tools. “Caroline,” she says slowly, eyes flickering between the contents of the cart and Caroline’s face, “did you...move here?”

“Um, technically? Just for the summer, though, for work.” She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I’m on assignment indefinitely.”

“And you’re staying at Hawthorne?”

Caroline nods and the look that flashes across Bonnie’s face is full of something she can’t quite put her finger one. But before she can analyze it, Bonnie is looking down at the thin watch on her wrist. 

“Listen,” she says, voice still gentle, as though Caroline is a deer that might spook at the slightest movement, “it’s almost eleven thirty. Would you want to grab lunch? You can fill me on everything that’s new with you.” Her eyes search Caroline’s. “What do you say?”

And she wants to, _so_ badly but—

“I would,” Caroline says apologetically, “but I’ve all this stuff that might thaw in the car—”

Bonnie’s eyes drop to her cart. “We’ll go to my place,” she decides firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument. “Grams made red beans and rice last night, and you know that tastes even better the next day.” Knowing brown eyes meet her own. “And she made that jalapeño cornbread that I remember you loving.” 

Oh god, she does love Grams’ homemade cornbread, and how long had it been since she had had cornbread of any kind? Over a _decade_ — “You’ve twisted my arm, Bennett,” Caroline says with a small laugh. “I’m convinced.”

Which is how she finds herself in Sheila Bennett’s garage, shuffling around her frozen meals in a deep freezer full of food that is far, far more tempting. She settles her handful of small boxes next to a stack of homemade frozen key lime pies; the sight makes her mouth water. 

“Those are just plain sad, Care,” Bonnie says from the door, shaking her head as Caroline reaches up to pull the top of the freezer down. “Tell me you’re not planning on surviving all summer on Lean Cuisines.”

Caroline follows her into the kitchen, which is just as she remembers. The wallpaper is still faded roosters and only broken up by wood paneling, the floor is still vinyl that peels a bit where it meets the wall, the appliances are the same ancient cream, and they still creak when their doors are pulled too hard. 

“Not _all_ summer,” she defends as Bonnie opens a cabinet and pulls out two tall glasses. “Just this first week, while I get my feet under me. I fully plan on cracking open one of Mimi’s cookbooks and giving cooking a go.”

Bonnie opens her mouth to reply but she is cut off by the sound of a voice Caroline hasn’t heard since she was fifteen. “As I live and breathe,” Grams says as she enters the kitchen, “I thought I recognized your voice.” She holds her arms out for a hug. “Come here, sugar.” 

Grams’ hold is tight, and it turns out, exactly what Caroline needed. She closes her eyes and lets the feeling of arms around her soothe her frayed nerves. 

“Look at you, sweet girl,” Grams breathes, pulling back a fraction to look her over. Her eyes, the same amber as Bonnie’s, sweep over her. “Too skinny by half, I see. I’ll need to give Liz an earful about that, mhmm. Sit, honey, and tell me how you’ve been.”

—

The red beans and rice might just be the best thing she’s had to eat in a decade, and she declares that fact loudly. Neither Bennett seems impressed, though she does appreciate their delicate avoidance of just how long it’s been since she’s been in Avery. 

“I already worried about you girls, all alone in big cities,” Grams says with a disapproving shake of her head, “and now you tell me they can’t even feed you right up there.”

Bonnie sighs, and Caroline gets the impression that this is a well-tread argument. “Grams, Nashville isn’t the same as New York.”

“And New York isn’t so bad,” Caroline adds before helping herself to another piece of cornbread. “It’s never boring.” She focuses on Bonnie. “What’re you doing in Nashville, Bon?”

It’s Grams who answers. “She’s getting her PhD in Psychology at Vanderbilt.” She beams at Bonnie, who smiles back with a tinge of embarrassment. The pride that is so evident on Grams’ face is enough to make Caroline look away, the feeling of missing Mimi suddenly sharp and insistent.

But she pushes it away, determined to not make this about her. “Bonnie!” She leans forward and nudges Bonnie’s shoulder with her own, a grin blossoming on her face. “You didn’t say anything! That’s so awesome!” 

Bonnie shakes her head and looks down at the remnants of her food, a blush beginning to fan out across her cheeks. “It’s not exactly something you can just drop into casual conversation,” she protests lightly, scraping her fork across her nearly empty plate. “‘Oh hey, Caroline, haven’t seen you in a long time, and oh, by the way…’” she trails off and Caroline laughs.

“Okay, okay,” she concedes, holding up her hands. “Valid.”

Grams turns her attention to Caroline. “Tell me all about your adventures up in _the Big Apple_.” The words are accompanied by a small shimmy of her shoulders and a saucy grin that make Caroline laugh. 

“It’s very…” she stops and tilts her head, considering. “Busy. It’s busy all the time, like, I could wake up at two twenty-seven in the morning wanting fresh—” she searches her mind for something absurd, “—apple dumplings, and if I wanted to, I could find them.” 

She doesn’t say that while she’s loved her time in New York, she’s been missing her mother more and more of late. She doesn’t say that the bustle of the city sometimes makes her head spin, and as though by taking a break, by _resting_ that she’s losing precious time. 

But Grams’ eyes are sharp, knowing. “Sounds tiresome to an old woman,” she says, reaching forward and taking Caroline’s hand in her own firm grip. “But you’re a good, hardworking girl, honey. And I imagine you’re very good at what you do.”

Something warm twists in Caroline’s stomach at the praise and she beams a little. “The apple dumplings wouldn’t be as good as yours, Grams,” she says, and she means it. Grams’ eyes twinkle at her over her glass of sweet tea.

It’s over strawberry ice cream—homemade, with chunks of watery red berry spun into the cream and sugar; Caroline has to bite back an actual _moan_ —that Bonnie says to Grams, her voice casual enough to prick at Caroline’s ears, “Care is staying at Hawthorne House, Grams.”

Grams’ spoon never stops its swirls around her bowl, but there’s something Caroline can’t quite put her finger on—a pause, an inhale, a twitch of her brow, _something_ —that sends a wave of uneasy energy skittering over her veins. “And how are you finding it, sweetheart?”

Swallowing around the sudden lump in her throat, Caroline looks down at the wood grain of the table, tracing an indentation with her pointer finger. “Um, it’s fine,” she says vaguely, unable to force herself to give voice to her unease. “Weird, without Mimi.”

The smile Bonnie shoots her way is tinged with sympathy, but it’s Grams’ response that captures her attention. 

“I don’t know how much Bonnie told you about our family, honey,” she says mildly, “but we’re a bit...in tune with the natural world.” Before Caroline can ruminate on just what _that_ means, Grams continues on, her smile sharp, “If you’re the least bit uncomfortable, we could come sage it for you.” 

Caroline stills, the word _sage_ knocking around in the back corners of her mind. 

Elena had once written an article for _Town and Home_ describing what she had termed _new age millennial fix-its_. The article had detailed various crystals and homeopathic healing methods and, true to her word, Caroline had proofread and edited the piece within an inch of its printed life. 

In it, she remembers, Elena had written _sage: to cleanse a room or self of negative energy_. 

The memory, all at once so clear, sends a shiver down her back. 

“Sage?” she repeats uncertainly, and her heart begins to thud with unease. “For, like, bad vibes?” 

Bonnie nods enthusiastically. “Only if you feel like you need it,” she says. “You just seem kind of...uncomfortable, you know?” Caroline doesn’t know what look she has on her face, but whatever it is has Bonnie clarifying, “Both times the house has been brought up, your shoulders have slumped forward, and you look down. Like you don’t want to talk about it, or like—like something is wrong.” 

Caroline offers a weak smile. “Putting that psych degree to work already,” she jokes, but neither Bennett laughs. Their calm lack of reaction sends a shiver down her spine. “Um, I dunno. It’s weird, being there without Mimi, and I guess I—I feel bad that I left things the way I did. With her. With this town.” Her eyes sting and she blinks back the sudden desire to cry. “It feels like I made this huge mistake and I’ll never be able to fix it because she’s gone.” 

“Oh, honey,” Grams says, leaning forward and taking her hand in her own strong grip. “Don’t you think another minute about that. Take it from an old friend—Meg knew how much you loved her.” Her face is soft, her eyes gentle. “That was never once in doubt, sweet girl.”

Caroline nods, unable to speak around the lump that has formed in her throat. 

But Grams seems to understand. “You let us know, sweet pea. About that sage,” she says, giving Caroline’s hand another squeeze. 

—

It’s late when she gets back, and as Caroline stares up at the dark windows of Hawthorne House, something that feels a bit like nerves tugs low in her belly. The night is clear as a bell, and the light of the moon effectively hides the shine of the stars, but it illuminates the kudzu laden trees around her. The flowing branches of the weeping willow are motionless. 

There is a pause in her step as she gets out of the car, a lingering pause in her fingers as she twists the car keys around her fingers. She taps the lock button and the horn that sounds in affirmation makes her nearly jump out of her skin. “Jesus,” she mumbles under her breath, a hand coming to clasp at her heart. 

The cicadas are out, humming from deep within the woods, and it should be comforting—these are the noises of her childhood summers, after all. Caroline can almost hear Mimi’s voice, calling her name, telling her to not venture too far into the woods. _Don’t want you to get got_ , Mimi would say, her blue eyes fond and crinkling at the edges; and she had always come running back, a whirlwind of dusty legs and messy braids.

The Wal-Mart bag in her hands rustles and it’s the only sound other than the cicadas that break the stillness. Caroline could curse her morning self for not at least leaving the porch light on. The darkness is so encompassing that it almost feels smothering, pressing in on her on all sides. 

And maybe it’s her heightened tension, or a side effect of her conversation with Bonnie and Grams—how did an offer to _sage_ the house affect her this much, Jesus—but Caroline swears she feels something brush across the nape of her neck. _Bad vibes._

Before she can think about it, her hand comes up and clasps desperately at the spot—

A _fucking spider—_ she gasps loudly and flicks it away, biting back a dramatic squeal of disgust. “Ewww,” she moans quietly, shaking her fingers out and fighting the urge to let her body wiggle like a worm on a hook, lest there be more. 

But it was just a spider. Nothing strange about a _spider_ in the middle of the Mississippi countryside, despite her tension and unease. Her shoulders drop and her muscles relax a fraction as she shakes her head. 

“You are being an overdramatic wimp, Forbes,” she tells her reflection in the screen door firmly. “Grow some ovaries and woman the hell up.” She nods to herself once, then grasps at her keys to open the doors and go inside. 

As the doors shut behind her, the wind chimes begin to sway softly.

It’s overkill and probably going to be hell on her electric bill, but Caroline turns a light on in every room in the house. The echo of footsteps from this morning, easily brushed off in the sunlight, comes roaring back now that daylight has vanished beneath the curve of the earth.

“I need to see,” she defends to the quiet air around her. “Last thing anyone needs is to end up in minor med because I tripped over a rug or something.”

The air remains silent, and Caroline considers the argument won.

She unloads her groceries into the fridge, relishing the cold air emanating from it for a moment. Next come the bags with the cleaning supplies, which she pushes into the cabinets below the sink. 

There are still more bags in the hatchback of the car. She hadn’t been able to carry everything in a single trip so she had gathered all the frozen and refrigerated goods first. But now that those are all safely tucked away in the cold, she finds that she really, _really_ doesn’t want to venture back out to the driveway. 

Then again, her brand-new coffee maker is in there and she needs to bang out at least some semblance of an article by week’s end to satisfy Natalie.

Plus, she’d promised Elena a FaceTime date and the router is snuggled next to the coffee maker. 

Heaving a sigh, Caroline squares her shoulders and heads out to the car, the keys clutched in the valley between her fingers. 

The soft yellow light of the porchlight doesn’t reach very far, and when Caroline hits the unlock button the car keys, the headlights light up the night around the car. They’re too bright, and for a moment she is blinded, one hand coming up to shield her eyes— 

She can practically hear the blood roaring in her ears, but the darkness around the car is empty. “You are such a baby,” she scolds herself, not bothering to lower her voice as she makes her way to the hatch. “I mean, _God_.” 

Carefully, she slides the bag handles up her forearms, trying to gauge just how much she can fit on each arm when she overestimates the strength of one particularly frayed handle and it breaks entirely, sending her router box tumbling to the gravel. “For _fuck’s_ sake,” she groans, resisting the urge to literally kick rocks. Instead, she squats down and retrieves the box from where it had landed just under the car next to a tire. 

It’s on her way back to standing that she sees— _thinks_ she sees— 

—a person, a shadow—

Caroline goes still, not daring to move a muscle. She had stood up too fast, she thinks, heart pounding furiously against her ribs. A trick of the light, or she had gotten lightheaded— 

“Hello?” she tries to call out, but it comes out in a whisper, and as soon as she says it, she could smack herself. _Fuck_ , she would absolutely be the first one to die in a horror movie. 

Maybe it’s Hannah Grace, she reasons, or Mary, come to— to _what_? They hardly seemed the type to bring by a neighborly casserole. 

Swallowing hard, Caroline speeds up her movements, though she is careful to not break any more plastic bags. 

If anything else falls out, she’s writing it off as lost to the kudzu. 

— 

It’s easy to forget, to put the strangeness of the last two days out of her mind, with a load of laundry going in the surprisingly modern washer, a glass of wine in her hand, and Elena on FaceTime. 

“Caroline, it’s so _cute_ ,” Elena coos over the small phone screen. “So everything is exactly as your great-grandmother left it?”

“Down to the dead possum I had to clean out of the kitchen,” Caroline confirms dryly, taking a long sip of the white wine she had impulse bought at Wal-Mart. 

“How very Laura Ingalls of you. Tell me all about the town,” Elena instructs, taking a sip of her own wine, a deep burgundy. “Have you run into anyone you used to know? Found out any hot gossip?” She arches one eyebrow dramatically and Caroline laughs. 

“I mean, not really? I ran into a guy whose little brother I had a crush on, like a billion years ago—do _not_ look at me like that, ‘Lena, Father Time really did not treat him right, poor guy, who knows what happened to his brother—”

Elena giggles around the mouth of her wine glass. “You’re like, ten minutes and another glass away from dropping a few _bless your heart_ s, Care.” 

Caroline shrugs and half toasts her with her wine glass. “When in Rome. Oh, but get this—I also ran into my friend Bonnie, remember I told you about her?”

Two thousand miles away, Elena’s forehead crinkles. “Maybe?” Her fingers snap and she points at Caroline. “The friend you sent the photos of that exhibit we saw at the Met? The one—” Elena snaps her fingers and points at the camera, “—that cool Greek mythology exhibit we saw last year. Same friend?”

“Yep, that’s her,” Caroline confirms. “I ran into her at Wal-Mart!”

Elena blinks at her. “Okay, wait. I have one—no, two questions. You didn’t text her about the assignment beforehand?” Before she can answer, Elena powers on with a shake of her head, “You’re a terrible friend, Forbes. Second— _Wal-Mart_?”

“Hey, you’d be wise to thank the Walton family for making this particular phone call a reality,” Caroline shoots back. “It’s not like there’s a ton of options within fifty miles, okay?” 

Her finger rolls absently around the rim of her wine glass as she continues. “And honestly, I just...Bonnie left for school up in the Northeast after high school, and I half followed her on Facebook, but I just—didn’t think that she would be home for the summer. I have no excuse, really, just that there’s been a lot going on. But!” she perks up brightly, “I had lunch with her and her grandma. Remember when you wrote that article about millennials and new age medicine?”

“Uh huh,” Elena says dryly, “and then I offered to sage your place and you said you couldn’t deal with the smell of smoke while having three different candles lit?” 

Caroline grimaces. “Right. _Right_. Sorry. But yeah, Bonnie and her grandmother offered to sage the house.”

Elena tilts her head, her hair falling over her shoulder and into her eyes; she brushes it out and fixes Caroline with a look that she knows well. It’s her _you’ve been overserved and it’s time to go, Caroline_ look; her patented _you don’t want to go home with that guy, Caroline, trust me here_ face. “Caroline,” she says firmly, “get the house saged.” 

Caroline shakes her head and gestures with her wine glass. “‘Lena. I promise, it’s _fine_.”

“Is it fine? Have you even gone into all the rooms yet?” Elena narrows dark eyes at her. “How do you know it’s all _fine_ —” she draws the word out sarcastically, “if you haven’t even looked?” 

She doesn’t answer, but her grimace gives her away. 

“Caroline!” Elena chides. “Go explore some! No joke, you might discover some stuff of your Mimi’s that you’ll want to keep.”

With a flourish, Caroline finishes off her glass. “You’re right. You’re totally right, and I also should really try to write something tonight, or Natalie will have my ass.” 

“I can look it over for you, if you want,” Elena offers. Her smile slips. “Since I’m probably moving into editing anyway.”

Caroline leans forward, a stern finger pointing at the camera. “Elena Marie Gilbert,” she scolds, “you are not going into editing unless it is absolutely what _you_ want to do. Send me some of the pieces you’ve written lately. We are getting you a goddamn feature, okay?” 

Elena makes a face at her. “If you say so.”

“I do say so. Send three pieces by eight am sharp, Gilbert. I mean it, not a minute later.”

“I will if you let your friend sage the house,” Elena counters, and it startles a laugh out of Caroline.

“Fine,” she says with a slight laugh. “I will, I promise.”

For a long moment, Elena considers her, her warm brown eyes studying her intently. “Be careful, okay?” she says finally. “I’m serious, Care, and not even about like, the _spookiness—_ ” she wiggles her fingers into the camera, “—but like, you’re in the middle of nowhere and just—” Elena trails off and sighs. “I just need you to be careful, okay? In fact, I may decide I require nightly check-ins or else I may have to call the local police for a welfare check, just to make sure you aren’t like, being held hostage or something. I’ve seen _Misery_ , you know.” 

It’s on the tip of her tongue to protest, but after a moment’s consideration, it does make a certain kind of sense. She _is_ alone, and the house _is_ rural, surrounded on all sides by a dense wood made all the denser by the thick vines of kudzu wrapping around the trees. 

“Okay,” she agrees, letting her chin come to rest in her palm and blowing her hair out of her face. “I agree to your terms.”

“Okay,” Elena echoes before giving her a tiny wave. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow then?”

“Tomorrow,” Caroline confirms, blowing her a kiss before tapping the red phone icon. Elena vanishes with a tiny electric _bloop_ and the only noise in the house is the soothing whirl of the air conditioning. 

— 

The sun has long vanished when Caroline decides to take Elena’s advice and go snooping—though, she rations, can it really be considered snooping if she’s opening drawers on what is legally her own property? 

“No,” she announces to the walls. “No, it cannot.” 

The walls, for their part, are silent. 

She starts on the first floor, avoiding the kitchen since she already knows the only things in the cabinets are the shiny new bottles of cleaning supplies she had just bought at Wal-Mart. Instead she rummages through the secretary desk by the door, finding a box of old photos that she will most definitely be examining later, and a bundle of branches tied together with a faded red ribbon that she sets aside for the trash. There are dried out pens, notepads with scribbles in Mimi’s scratchy handwriting that Caroline can’t bring herself to discard, and—her heart twists—an old photo of the two of them. 

In the photo, Mimi is giving a half smile at the camera, her eyes focused on a young Caroline who is off in mid-run towards a barn kitten that looks to be attempting to escape her small grabbing hands. She has no memory of this moment, but based on the oversized Barbie t-shirt, she guesses she’s around five. Her throat constricts and she puts the photo down, determined to continue her trek through the house without crying.

Well. Without crying _much_ , anyway. 

But it’s in the garage that she strikes gold. 

Hidden under a sheet, and what’s definitely layers of dust and probably mice poop—ew, she won’t think about that—is her old baby blue three speed bicycle. 

“Holy shit,” Caroline breathes, setting down her glass of wine and lifting the sheet with her thumb and pointer finger pinched together. It looks just like she remembers, though the Daisy Duck decal she’d stuck on one side of the frame when she was eleven has long faded. And maybe it’s the wine, but she looks down at her body and back at the bike, considering. She’d hit her last growth spurt around the time she’d been jetting around Avery on this thing with Bonnie Bennett, like they were the heroines in their very own _Sandlot_. 

And after all, her dad had bought her this bike with the intent that it would last her through to the summer before college. No one had expected Caroline to pitch a god-awful hissy fit at fifteen and demand to be sent to cheer camp instead. 

“Whaddya say, ole girl?” she croons to the handlebars. “Another go around, you and me?” 

She’s debating on if the glow of the porch light is enough for her to take the old bike out for a test spin, if she’s had too much wine to try or just enough to work up her nerve after her scare earlier; when, from somewhere outside the garage, there’s a loud thud. Caroline jumps and releases the sheet in surprise; it floats airily down back over the bicycle. 

There it is again. _Thud_. 

A cold rivet of sweat starts to pool at the base of her spine, the soft haze of the wine vanishing in an instant. She is suddenly hyper-aware of just how thin the garage walls are, and just how little light the single bulb hanging over her head is emitting. Caroline reaches for her back pocket and feels a modicum of comfort when her fingers touch her phone. 

Not that she has anyone to call other than the police, and what would she even say to them? _There was a loud noise outside my garage, and yes, I’m aware I’m currently miles away from civilization but could you please come chase away what is probably just a very large raccoon?_

No, she’s made of sterner stuff than that. 

“Don’t be a baby, Forbes,” she whispers firmly to herself. “It’s just a bigass possum or something. Probably here to avenge its friend from the kitchen.” She nods once to the empty air and picks up her glass of wine, toasting the remaining objects in the garage that rest under yellowing sheets before heading back into the house.

—

Later, when she’s thinking clearly, she’ll blame it on the wine. Two glasses with only a measly Lean Cuisine in her stomach was sure to be at fault. 

It’s only just past nine pm when Caroline falls asleep unceremoniously into clean, dust-free sheets, surrounded by spearmint walls and with a warm, almost happy feeling uncurling in her belly. The sound of the air conditioning lulls her almost immediately to a relaxed, deep sleep— 

— until she wakes up with her heart thudding wildly in her chest and her breathing shallow, as though she had just completed a marathon. 

Caroline sits straight up and squeezes her eyes shut tightly, feeling wetness leak out of the corners. She clutches at her chest in a bid to calm her furious heart rate, and slowly, slowly, her breathing evens out. Her panting is loud, breaking the quiet stillness of the room. 

Her dream is all a fog, but she thinks she may have been running in it—but from what, from who, she has no idea. It would explain her racing heart, the adrenaline still coursing through her veins, and the breathing she is trying desperately to get under control. 

She raises a hand to rub at her forehead before opening her eyes and reaching for the bedside lamp— 

—and blinks in confusion. 

This is Mimi’s room. 

Her heart rate, having only just slowed back to normal, starts to speed back up. 

Slowly, carefully, as though she might explode if she makes too sudden a movement, Caroline slips out of the bed and stares in rising panic at the pale yellow wallpaper—the very much _not_ spearmint green wallpaper. “Don’t freak out,” she whispers to herself, walking to the door on her tiptoes and peeking out into the hallway. It is empty, and she makes her way across the hall to her room. 

The bed is unmade, the comforter tossed haphazardly to the side and Caroline lets out the breath she had been unconsciously holding. “Okay,” she says to quiet walls, “okay.”

Her phone is still sitting on the nightstand where she had left it plugged into the charger. The clock on the home screen reads 3:04 am and Caroline stands uncertainly next to the bed with it clutched tightly in her hand, unsure of her next move.

She has never slept walked before, but, she reasons, it does make a certain kind of sense. Most of her day had been spent thinking about Mimi, talking about Mimi, and missing Mimi, so it’s not really that surprising that her unconscious brain had picked her body up and moved it to be as physically close to Mimi as possible. 

But it’s disconcerting, waking up where she knows she didn’t fall asleep. 

Caroline doesn’t sleep the rest of the night. 

As soon as the clock on her phone hits 6:30 am, she texts Steven. _You win_ , is all it says. 

Forty-five minutes later, he calls her. 

“Atticus or Finch?” he says without greeting. 

Four hours later, she meets him in Birmingham.

“For the record,” he says after giving her a big bear hug, “you lasted longer than I thought you would.”

She points at him warningly. “I’m not scared,” she insists before popping the hatch and helping him carry a large bag of dog food over to the Subaru. It lands with a _thud_. “I just...really need the company. That house is so big and so—”

“Spooky?”

“I was going to say _empty_.”

Steven shrugs. “To-may-to, to-ma-to.” His smile is wide and comforting, and in it, Caroline wonders why she denied herself a stepfather for so long. 

“I’m a single girl in a big, otherwise empty house in the middle of nowhere. I’ve seen _The Strangers_ , okay?”

He laughs. “Well, Finch here is the best dog for the job. Although I should disclose he flunked out of K9 school, so.” 

Caroline squats down so that she is at eye-level with Finch, who promptly tries to lick her face. “More interested in kisses than crime?”

“Something like that,” Steven says, and Finch barks agreeably. 

“He’s perfect,” Caroline says and she’s almost positive Finch’s tail starts wagging at the words.

When she returns to Hawthorne House, hours later with Finch in tow, the sun is high in the sky, her stomach is growling, and the clock on the dash reads 3:46 pm. Caroline looks over at Finch, with his big brown eyes and serious, soulful gaze, and says, “Whaddya think, my guy?”

He blinks at her before lifting one paw and placing it on her arm. It’s strangely comforting.

She lets him out of the front seat and he bounds around the driveway, stopping to sniff and pee. Caroline watches as he yawns and stretches before sitting and looking over at her expectantly. 

“I dunno, man,” she tells him seriously. “I’ve never had a dog before.” 

He barks and stands, tail wagging. 

She has to fight back a grin as he follows her up the front porch steps, his ears perking at every tiny sound. The wind chimes flutter and he _jumps_ , letting loose a series of loud barks before he seems to realize that there is no immediate threat. 

“You’re a good boy,” she croons as she opens the door. 

Finch sniffs the entire house, and she watches with a hint of anticipation that she’d rather not analyze when he gets to Mimi’s door. But he has no reaction, carrying on without a care, and her shoulders relax, a burden she had barely realized she was holding easing a fraction. 

“You wanna watch the place for me?” she asks him seriously as she packs her laptop and notes into her tote. He yawns, settling himself on the foot of her bed and laying his head in his paws. She can’t help but smile at him. “Good boy,” she repeats, scratching him behind his ears before heading down the steps.

— 

The parking lot of Number Seven is empty, save for what she assumes is Klaus’s car near the side door. Caroline is hardly a car person, but even she knows a nice car when she sees one and her forehead wrinkles in confusion. The mystery of Klaus, she decides with more than a little curiosity, is ever deepening. 

The bar is a far cry from when she had been there previously. The afternoon sun is streaming in, and she’s impressed to note that in the light of day, the bar is cleaner than most she’s seen. And she’s seen _a lot_. 

“What can I get for you?” Klaus asks from the bar. He sets aside the glasses he had been cleaning and leans forward onto forearms that are laid bare by rolled up shirtsleeves. It makes her mouth go dry. 

“Um, just a sweet tea, actually,” she says, her hands resting on the back of one of the high chairs before she motions to a booth behind her. “I’ve gotta work.”

One of his eyebrows lifts ever so slightly at that and he nods. “Coming up,” he says lightly, pushing off the bar top to grab a glass. 

Caroline settles into the booth, pulling out her MacBook and her notebook, full of half sentences and scribbles of ideas. She powers up the laptop and, with more than a little reluctance, pulls her AirPods out, watching out of the corner of her eye as Klaus moves around the bar.

He catches her looking and she turns away, her face reddening; but when she sneaks a look back, he has a smirk playing around his mouth. She feels one echo on her own face before she scolds herself internally and straightens, staring her laptop screen down with a pointed determination that she doesn’t entirely feel. 

She has fragments of notes, half-written run-on sentences that trail off with no discernible endings, and a stack of old photographs to go through. It might take most of the night to even get to a starting point.

“Tell me about it,” Klaus says, nodding at her computer before sliding over a tall glass of tea; and she sees that he has made himself what looks to be a cup of coffee. He sits down across from her and she feels her eyebrows go up questioningly as she takes her headphones out of her ears.

“Aren’t you working?” 

He shrugs nonchalantly, and she very firmly does not notice how the motion pulls his shirt across his chest. “Ah yes, the pre-dinner crowd is very demanding,” he says, a half smile pulling at his mouth as he gestures around at the empty bar. “You’re it, I’m afraid.” 

She rips open the paper surrounding her straw and takes a long drink of the tea; it doesn’t escape her that he watches her like a cat watches a mouse. For a long moment, she chews on the straw—a habit she thought she had left behind in childhood—and wonders about him. Where he came from, why he picked this town, of all places. 

What his bedroom ceiling looks like. 

“It just got upgraded to a longer assignment, actually,” she begins, leaning forward and re-arranging some of her notes. “ _Apparently_ , like, a third of the magazine’s subscribers live outside of a major metro, so my editor wants me to include like—” she gestures aimlessly with her glass of sweet tea, “—slices of rural life.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Apple pie recipes?”

That makes her snort. “Why, you got a good one?”

He grins. “Afraid not, sweetheart.” Before she can ponder _that_ , he continues smoothly, “How have the first few nights been, now that you’re back in town?”

Caroline has to fight off the blush that she’s like, eighty percent sure he’s trying to provoke. It’s on the tip of her tongue to banter back, _and why are you so interested in my nights?_ But she keeps it to herself— _business trip, this is a business trip, Forbes_ — “A little too quiet for me,” she says, stirring her tea and flashing him a smile. “More of a city girl these days.” 

There’s something in his smile, an edge to it, a sharpness to it, that makes her want, inexplicably, to sink her teeth into him. And she thinks he knows it. 

Klaus leans forward and she finds herself mimicking the motion, drawn to him. “Go to dinner with me,” he suggests, his eyes locked on hers. 

_Yes_ forms behind her teeth, but before the word can catch air and take flight, the door to the bar opens and Fisher Hamilton shouts from the entrance, “Get away from him, Caroline!” 

It’s the conviction in his voice, the terror in his tone, that makes her spine snap straight before she turns. 

He looks _nothing_ like the Fisher Hamilton she had seen just days ago. Caroline has to fight a gasp as she stands. She’s vaguely aware of Klaus doing the same behind her, both of them moving carefully as though to not spook him. 

Fisher’s hair is disheveled, his eyes wild with real fear as he stares at them; and he sounds so truly terrified that Caroline takes an instinctive step towards him, away from Klaus. 

“Fish,” she says slowly, carefully, one hand reaching out as though to steady him, “what’s wrong?”

But he only stares at her, eyes wide and afraid, before he drops to the floor in a dead faint. 

“ _Ohmigod_ ,” she breathes, rushing over to him; behind her, she can hear Klaus speaking to what she can only hope is a 911 dispatcher. A quick glance over her shoulder confirms it. 

She kneels and touches his shoulder hesitantly. “Fisher?” When he is unresponsive, panic begins to unfurl in her stomach. It’s been years since she took a CPR course, it was Bonnie who lifeguarded at the community pool every summer, and she can’t believe twelve years of watching _Grey’s Anatomy_ faithfully is failing her at literally the most crucial moment— 

“Roll him to his side,” Klaus orders, appearing at her shoulder and kneeling down next to her. “Paramedics are on their way.” He gingerly lifts Fisher’s head and slides a balled-up spill rag under it. 

Caroline watches helplessly as he methodically searches Fisher’s pockets, pulling his keys out and gingerly placing them to one side, followed by a small Swiss Army knife. 

“Why—” 

“Don’t want him rolling over onto anything sharp,” Klaus says brusquely, his fingers wrapping around Fisher’s wrist—to monitor a pulse, she’s assuming. _Oh God_. 

The EMTs take longer than she had hoped, and as the ambulance screams towards them, Caroline realizes that her hands are shaking. Klaus notices too, and wordlessly takes them in his own; his fingers are warm and his grip is strong. 

“Fuck,” she whispers as the paramedics bring out a stretcher, as they throw around words like _grand mal seizure_. “I had no idea he was even sick.” 

His hand squeezes hers reassuringly. “I’m going to close for the night,” he says quietly. “Would you like a ride to the hospital?”

She exhales heavily. “Yeah. Yeah, thanks.”

The press of his palm into the small of her back isn’t enough to eclipse her worry, but the feeling of his touch through the thin fabric of her shirt is just distracting enough to take the edge off. 

“God,” she says softly as she slides into the passenger seat, “I hope Fisher is okay.” She hesitates before cautiously pressing forward. “What’s a bartender in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi doing with a car like this?”

Klaus turns the key, his expression unreadable. “That,” he murmurs as he downshifts, “is a long story.” He pauses before allowing, “Perhaps for another time.” 

“Another time,” she echoes, but still she watches him out of the corner of her eye the entire ride to the hospital. 

— 

**tbc.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I am incapable of not giving Caroline an animal companion. I'm not sorry!
> 
> [Seizure First Aid](https://www.cdc.gov/epilepsy/about/first-aid.htm)
> 
> [Key Lime Pie](https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/key-lime-pie-recipe1-2011840)
> 
> [Red Beans & Rice](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/58211/authentic-louisiana-red-beans-and-rice/)
> 
> [Vanderbilt](https://www.vanderbilt.edu/)
> 
> [Cicadas](https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/davis-key-to-species-of-the-genus-tibicen-found-in-the-southeastern-united-states/)
> 
> find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) or [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline hates hospitals.
> 
> or: things that go bump in the night.
> 
> -a southern gothic AU

**teeth in the grass**

**chapter three**

* * *

Caroline hates hospitals. 

She hates the fluorescent lights, she hates the sounds of the machines constantly whirring and beeping, and she especially hates the way they smell—clean, but not clean in the way that a home may smell. There is no lemony scent of Pine-Sol, the soft and flowery scent of laundry detergent, or even the stinging smell of bleach. She thinks she’d prefer that.

Instead, it smells sterile. As though life, in all its beautiful, bountiful glory, came in, took one look around and walked straight back out. She wishes she could do the same. 

All of it, the sights, the sounds, and especially the smells, throw her backwards in time, to another hospital, in another state, battling the twin emotions of overwhelming terror and crushing sadness as she waited for news of another patient; her mother at her side as she watched Steven break down, fighting back sobs that threatened to crash over her like white-tipped waves breaking over a sandbar— 

“Penny for them?” 

She blinks, the words bringing her back to the present, and looks up to see Klaus holding out a Styrofoam cup of what she’s sure is disgusting hospital-grade coffee. 

“Your thoughts,” he clarifies as she takes the cup, and she hates the feel of the soft Styrofoam against her fingertips too. 

Her thoughts, her thoughts, what are _her thoughts_ —

“I hate hospitals,” she says finally, unable to keep the edge out of her voice. She doesn’t drink the coffee; instead, her nail picks at a loose ball of Styrofoam that has pilled at the rim of the cup. 

He sits next to her and her eyes follow his knee as it treads dangerously close to her own. “They are quite uncomfortable,” he comments lightly, and she feels a rush of gratitude when he doesn’t push the issue, doesn’t make her elaborate on _why_. Instead they sit in a quiet, companionable silence; Caroline watches as nurses in blue scrubs walk past them. 

It isn’t until a woman rushes over, her red hair in disarray, that their quiet stillness cracks.

“Fish?” the woman cries out, hovering in the doorway to Fisher’s hospital room, and Caroline feels a shock of recognition go through her at the sound of the woman’s voice. 

“Sara?” she blurts out in mild disbelief, standing as the woman hurries over—Sara, who Caroline had admittedly not known all that well given the handful of years that separated them, but who had always been a mainstay on the periphery of her Avery friends. She blinks and her memory floods with images of Sara the cheerleader, Sara who always brought a cookie cake to every backyard bonfire, her grape Sonic slushie half-filled with vodka— _Sara_ is Sara Leigh, Fisher’s wife.

Sara—Sara _Leigh_ , her mind corrects, turns to look over her and Caroline sees the recognition flare in her face. “Caroline _Forbes_?” She hurries over to the bench they had been sitting on, Klaus having now stood as well. 

“What happened? The—the ER nurse said that he had a _seizure_ , Fish has never had a seizure in his _life_ —” 

Caroline is at a loss in the face of a panicking wife, and to her relief, a nurse steps in with a gentle, “Mrs. Hamilton?” 

Sara Leigh whirls around to face the nurse, a flurry of red hair and panic; and as they begin to speak in low tones, Caroline stands there, twining her hands tightly and feeling completely and utterly useless. 

Warm fingers brush her elbow. “It doesn’t seem that we’re needed here any longer,” Klaus says quietly, his chin dipping towards her. “If you’d like to leave.”

 _Yes_ forms on her tongue, but before it can spring out into the space between them, she casts another concerned glance over to where Sara Leigh and the nurse are in deep conversation. Klaus follows her gaze.

“They have our phone numbers,” he points out gently. “Should they need anything further from us.”

She watches anxiously as Sara Leigh’s fingers twist her wedding ring around her finger. The other woman’s hands are shaking slightly and Caroline feels a pang of sympathy. She remembers all too clearly the acrid taste of fear on her tongue, waiting for a surgeon to give her the time of day, and being this close to another person’s pain is enough to send her reeling.

“Yeah,” she agrees finally, allowing him to pull her away. “Yeah, you’re right.” 

It’s in the elevator that she blurts out, “Do you think he’ll be okay?” Almost instantly she wants to call the words back, because of course he doesn’t know—he _can’t_ know, because he isn’t Fisher’s doctor, or a psychic. 

But the look he gives her is thoughtful and considering. “I don’t know,” he says slowly. “But he arrived here quickly, and is quite young.” The half-smile he shoots her way is comforting. “That can only help.”

She nods distractedly, her arms crossed over her chest and her fingers tight around her own elbows. “I seriously hate hospitals,” she repeats, unconsciously gripping herself closer. The elevator—the world’s slowest, she’s sure of it—ticks down until they finally, _finally_ reach the ground level. 

His hand lingers at the small of her back as they walk out. 

— 

They walk in companionable silence, side by side, towards his car in the dimly lit hospital parking garage. It’s half-empty, the light reflecting off the muted color of the other cars in the lot, and as they approach his, Caroline can’t help but notice that they’re in lockstep. She quickly looks away before the observation can warm her any more than it already does.

“Back to the bar to pick up your car, then?” Klaus asks as he holds her door open for her. Instead of answering or sliding into the passenger seat, she leans back against the frame of the car and checks the time on her phone before returning to consider him.

“It’s one am,” she tells him, “and I could maybe eat. If you don’t mind.” 

Something crosses his face, but before she can pin it down and analyze it, it’s gone; she’s not even sure she really saw it. 

“I don’t mind,” he says, one corner of his mouth ticking up as he half-smiles at her. “But I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a place open this late.”

“This _early_ ,” she corrects him as she sits in the passenger seat and pulls her legs in after her. “And I know a place.” 

Ten minutes later, as they settle into their booth, he says archly, “Not exactly what I had in mind when I said dinner.”

When she glances over at him, there’s an amused tilt to his mouth that makes something akin to attraction twist low in her stomach. She pushes it down, but can’t keep the flirtatious lilt from her tone—she’s only human, after all. “Yeah well. You gotta be more specific next time. Waffle House is fine dining, my friend.” 

The red glow of the traffic light hanging down over the nearby street reflects off the window next to their spot, bathing them both in its dim, fractured haze. It’s under that light that he looks up and meets her eyes. 

“Alright,” he says, his voice low and silky enough to send shivers slipping down her spine. “I will be, then. Next time.” 

It lingers in the space between them, the implication of a future; that this is but the start of something. 

Klaus inspects the menu with far more scrutiny than she’d bet anyone has ever given anything produced by a Waffle House. The plastic cover catches the fluorescent lights from overhead and crinkles as he turns it over. 

“You’ve seriously never eaten at a Waffle House?” Caroline asks incredulously, watching as his eyes scan the words. “How long have you been here, again?” 

“In Mississippi or the States?” he counters.

“The _South_.”

He tilts his head and dimples. “A few years,” he says, and she narrows her eyes at him.

“Cagey,” she informs him tartly, leaning back in the booth and crossing her arms over her chest. “But okay. Fine. We can go with that—a couple of years. In the _multiple years_ you have lived in this part of the country, you’ve seriously never once found yourself in a Waffle House?”

“Afraid not.” He’s not bothering to hide his smile now. 

“Yeah well, clearly you never attended a fraternity formal where you had four too many Jell-O shots and had to sober up before being let back into your sorority house.” She gestures to the menu in front of him. “As someone who has, I can honestly tell you that after midnight, nothing on God’s green earth hits the spot the way Waffle House does.” 

That makes him laugh. “I cannot say that is an experience I’m familiar with,” he agrees, and again she gets the distinct impression he could swallow her whole. She gets the feeling that he wants to. 

She thinks she would let him. 

—

The drive back to the bar flies by, thanks in no small part, Caroline is sure, to the fact that she is somewhat free of the anxiety that had been wrapped around like a vise. Fisher, she assures herself, is in the best place for him to be, getting the care he needs; and the reassuring thought helps. 

Though she won’t be getting the mental image of him on the floor, struggling to breathe, out of her mind anytime soon.

Klaus smoothly pulls his car next to hers and parks it before glancing in over at her as he hits the ignition button to turn the car off. “That,” he says with a single arched eyebrow, “did not count as dinner.” 

She turns in her seat to shoot an over-indignant look his way. “Are you impugning the honor of the one AM Waffle House run?” she demands lightly. “Because I will have you know that not only was that dinner _and_ breakfast, it was also an _event_ in your culinary life.” 

“Noted,” he says dryly; she watches as he turns his attention down towards his wristwatch. Caroline has lived in New York City long enough to recognize that it’s expensive, the piece on his wrist— _who are you_ , she wonders. Sharp clothes, pricey watches, and his general disposition all seem so entirely out of place in this dusty, dying town. _And why are you here?_

“Be that as may,” he continues, interrupting her thoughts, “can I interest you in lunch, then? Later today?” 

“Dinner, breakfast, _and_ lunch? I dunno, man, may wanna pump the brakes there,” she teases. “All in one day, too—whatever would the old Southern belles in my family tree think?” 

The light question gives rise to something that she has secretly wondered over the last few days: what Mimi would have thought of him with his charm and his dimples and his well-cut suits. Mimi, who suffered no fools, would have liked him, she likes to think. 

But instead of continuing to tease him, she reaches down to where his phone rests in one of the car’s cup holders. She holds it out to him and one corner of his mouth ticks upwards, showing a dimple, as he unlocks it and hands it back to her. 

Caroline resists the temptation to snoop, but only just—instead, she heads to the contacts and does what she’s been contemplating since that first day in Avery.

She gives him her number. 

“Lunch today may be a stretch,” she warns him as she holds the phone back out to him. “Since I fully plan on crashing as soon as I get home and may not wake up until like, 2 pm.” Right on cue, she has to bite back a yawn. “This is way, _way_ past my bedtime.” 

Something hot zips through her veins at the association of Klaus and bedtime, but she pushes past it resolutely. Dates first, she reminds herself firmly. Her one-night stand days are long in her past, and there they will stay. 

“Come by the bar then,” he suggests, leaning back against the car window. “When you’re ready to rejoin the world of the waking.” 

The words escape her before she can overthink it, before she can inspect and edit them to death. 

“It’s a date,” she says.

He grins. 

— 

Hawthorne House is no longer dark when she arrives home, thanks to the timers she had plugged into a few key lamps; their warm glow beckons her inside, promising rest and the blessed cool air of an active air conditioning. Caroline takes the front porch steps two at a time and unlocks both doors quickly. The windchimes are silent but the cicadas and the crickets chirp noisily from the depths of the woods. 

Finch’s tail wags happily at the sight of her, and he darts past her out the door, bounding around the driveway as he sniffs. She watches him sleepily, the action of the day having well and truly caught up to her. Her limbs feel heavy, and her eyelids struggle to stay open under the weight of what feels like sandbags. 

“Finch,” she calls out around a yawn as he paces, unable to find the perfect spot, “just pop a squat and _go_. Seriously, I’ve met Upper East Side socialites that are less picky than you’re being right now.” 

The look the dog sends her as he sniffs is so hilariously pained and long suffering that she snorts out loud. “Fine, but you know the longer you take, the longer you have to stay out here.”

He finally, _finally_ settles and she politely averts her eyes, until—

The sound of twigs snapping nearby breaks the warm, contented spell; Finch goes as still as a statue. Caroline freezes too, but she’s certain the thundering sound of her heartbeat betrays her. Another twig snaps, closer now, and gravel crunches. She knows this driveway like the back of her hand, and she knows that the gravel extends beyond what she can see in the dim light; but she also knows that it doesn’t extend _that_ far out into the forest. Whatever, _who_ ever this is, is close by. 

Finch stares out into the blackness, every strand of fur standing on edge; it’s that image that sparks goosebumps along the skin of her arms and sends a shiver snaking down her spine. The darkness is oppressively dense where the porch light fades, and she wants nothing more than to grab Finch and make a beeline for her bed. 

“Finch,” she tries to call out, but her voice is hoarse from use, and instead she croaks the word. Finch doesn’t move, his entire body ramrod straight, and then he _growls_. His lip curls, showing his canines, and his growl grows louder. Another twig snaps, then another, and they sound closer, as though whatever it is is creeping up towards the house. His ears are pinned back flat against his skull.

A sudden, furious heat propels her forward; whoever this is is threatening _her dog_ , the dog whose safety she was entrusted with, and she’ll be damned if some hillbilly thinks to scare her off her own goddamn property. Caroline reaches into her back pocket and turns on her phone’s flashlight, shining it right in the direction of the sounds. 

“Get out of here!” she shouts, storming up to where Finch still hasn’t moved. “Get out, before I call the cops!” 

The tiny pinprick of light barely penetrates the all-encompassing darkness; she can barely see a foot in front of her. The reach of the soft yellow porch light stretches only just past the front steps and she is well into the driveway, the rocks crunching under her thin sandals. She doesn’t move any further, and it feels like the entire world stops—the cicadas are quiet, the air is still, and forest itself seems to roar with silence. 

Caroline holds her breath, waiting for something—more footsteps, at the very least—but next to her, Finch slowly relaxes, his tail rising and beginning to wag. There’s a breeze now too, where the air had been previously stagnant, and as it brushes past her, she realizes that she’s sweating. 

She slowly lowers her phone, clicking her tongue. “Guess we scared ‘em off, huh?” she says with a weak laugh. Finch looks up at her, his tongue peeking out before he licks her hand. “You done? Can we go to sleep now?”

He blinks up at her before bounding away, as though _she_ is the reason they are currently facing off against thin air. 

It’s nearly 2 am when she finally, finally collapses into bed, Finch curling up at her feet.

—

Caroline dreams uncomfortable dreams. 

She’s standing on the front porch of Hawthorne House, and the windchimes are dancing as though the wind is gusting, but she feels nothing. She looks down and sees that her clothes are soaked through with water, her hair dripping wet with fat droplets falling to stain the wood of the porch. 

When she looks up, she is no longer on the porch, but instead in the woods. The moss-covered tree trunks surround her on all sides, and the thick, leafy branches stretch out high, blocking most of the sunlight. A thick blanket of kudzu smothers the forest, and a dark smudge sits on a downed, rotting trunk. She tries to focus, but every time she tries to look over at the shadow, her eyes skirt away of their own volition.

She blinks, and is suddenly standing in the living room of Hawthorne House, a photo of Mimi in her hands— 

A whine, then a cold, wet nose nudging her hand and her eyes fly open, her heart thundering in her chest. 

With fumbling fingers, she grabs for her phone where it sits on the bedside table; at least this time, she woke up where she went to sleep. _Small mercies_ , she thinks sardonically, wincing as the screen lights up, illuminating the darkness. 

The clock on her phone screen reads 3:27 am, and Finch looks up at her, his chin in his paws and his tail wagging uncertainly. 

Sleep is well and truly gone. Caroline slumps back into the covers, blowing wisps of escaped hair off of her forehead. “Damnit,” she mumbles irritably. 

There in the darkness, she weighs her options: try—and fail, she can already tell—to go back to sleep, or get up and abandon all pretense of the former. 

In the end, she meets herself in the middle. She eases the comforter back to tiptoe through the quiet hallways, then down the stairs, automatically sidestepping the creaky step third from the bottom, an old habit leftover from childhood. Her destination is the kitchen, where there’s an old electric kettle and a box of chamomile tea waiting for her. 

The only sound breaking the stillness of Hawthorne House is that of her bare feet padding against the hardwood floor. It’s dark, with the light of the moon hidden away by cloud cover, and Caroline hesitates only briefly before flipping the lights on as she makes her way through the halls. 

“Reasonable,” she assures herself out loud. “Because I’m alone. Not because I’m scared.”

From upstairs, there’s a loud noise, and she immediately proves herself a liar, whirling around as adrenaline spikes through her veins. 

But it’s only Finch, having jumped down from the bed and made his way to accompany her to the kitchen. His big brown eyes blink up at her and she exhales, one hand coming to lay against her heart. 

“Don’t do that,” she scolds lightly, softening the reprimand with a generous scratch behind his floppy ears. His tail wags and she turns back to head towards the kitchen. 

It’s as she’s filling the kettle that it strikes—the keen sense that she has been here before, that she has done this once already. _Déjà vu_ , she thinks fuzzily. She’d written an article on it once, about how some experts suspected it was the brain simply skipping ahead of itself before memories were able to form; that it wasn’t even really an unexplained phenomenon at all. 

Her fingers tighten on the kettle and the sense that _this has happened before_ closes in on her like walls pressing in— 

Gasping, she wakes up in bed. Sunlight is pouring through the window and Finch is snoring away happily at her feet. 

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. 

It had felt so _real_ —had she really been dreaming? 

Slowly, she pulls the covers back and slides her feet out, but doesn’t make a move to get out of bed. Her feet dangle and she braces herself on the edge of the bed, staring down at the patterns in the floor’s wood grain. 

“Finch,” she says softly; the dog wakes immediately, his ears perking. “Am I losing it?”

He tilts his head at her, then jumps off the bed, his tail wagging. 

When she reaches for her phone, her fingers are shaking. 

—

The shower helps ease the tension in her muscle as Caroline ponders her next steps. 

“Okay,” she says to the tiled walls, “first—am I sleepwalking? I definitely did the other night, but I think that was the only time.” Nodding to herself, she files that away—she’ll worry about it if it happens again.

“Second—is this house haunted?” she continues, rinsing the conditioner out of her hair. Next to the sides of the tub, Finch’s nose appears under the shower curtain, sniffing curiously, before vanishing. She hears him rustling, then watches in amusement as he clearly curls up next to the tub, his back appearing under the curtain. “This assumes,” she tells the tiles, “that ghosts are real, which, frankly—I’m not convinced.” 

Caroline reaches down and shuts off the faucet before grasping for the towel hanging just outside the shower. “Everyone keeps telling me that they are, and that this house is like, Casper central,” she says to Finch, who has moved and is now looking up at her happily, his tail wagging. “And I think it’s messing with my head.”

He has no answers for her, but she pats his head affectionately anyway. “You’re a good little listener,” she tells him. He licks her hand and she shakes her head, unable to fight her smile. 

Once in her bedroom, she pulls on a sundress; from the way the condensation is already appearing on her windows, she can tell it’s going to be an absolute steamer. 

She grabs her towel off the floor and heads down the steps; the third from the bottom squeaks loudly as she makes her way down. 

Finch trots next to her through the living room, waiting patiently as she tosses her towel into the laundry basket and heading with her into the kitchen. 

“You’re a little stage five clinger, you know that?” she says to him as she heads over to the stove—

—where the kettle sits, filled with water, a mug next to it and teabags haphazardly strewn. 

As though someone had begun making tea. 

As though _she_ had been making herself a cup, at three in the morning.

Caroline inhales sharply and Finch whines, his nose nudging her hand. 

“Okay,” she whispers, unease snaking down her spine. She refuses to let it morph into real fear, holding the desire to spiral at bay, because really, she reasons logically, what has _actually_ happened?

“I sleepwalked again,” she says quietly to the silent kitchen. 

And it wouldn’t be as unsettling if it didn’t come on the heels of her dreams, which had veered from weird into very firmly disturbing. Unbidden, the wisp of a memory of the dark smudge sitting patiently on the log whispers into her mind and despite the warmth of the early summer heat already seeping into the house, Caroline shivers.

—

It isn’t until she climbs in the car, Finch jumping easily into the passenger seat—she refuses to leave him alone there, especially after the events of the previous night—that she breathes easier. Her lungs had been feeling tight in her chest, and when Finch looks over at her curiously, she just shakes her head as she starts the car, inhaling deeply. The mid-morning sunshine slips through the canopy of thick leaves where the magnolias stretch towards the sky, their branches intertwining in a leafy love story above. It’s shady beneath their shadows, but hardly an escape from the encroaching heat. 

“I’m not doing it, Finch,” Caroline declares as she pulls the transmission into reverse. “I’m not living in a haunted house, because Morticia Addams I am _not_.” 

He blinks at her before settling his head in his paws, large brown eyes simply watching her as she turns the car around and heads down the driveway, her fingers clenched tight on the wheel. 

“We’re saging the house,” she whispers to herself as the car approaches the end of the driveway. “We’re saging the house, we’re saging the house and it’s gonna fix whatever the hell is _going on_ —” Slowly, she lets her foot off the brake to ease on to the highway— 

“Jesus _Christ_!” Caroline snarls, her palm slapping down onto the horn as that same _fucking_ red truck speeds by, unperturbed. “Seriously?” She gives the horn a few more aggressive taps for good measure, until Finch lets out a tiny whine in protest. Instantly, she yanks her hand back and reaches over to scratch right behind his ears. 

“Sorry,” she says, leaning over slightly to bump his forehead with her own. “Sorry, I’m mad. And freaked, but now just mostly mad.” He licks her palm and she settles back into the driver’s seat, her brow furrowing. 

“How,” she wonders aloud, making no move to pull forward onto the highway, “have I nearly been t-boned by the same old ass truck two days in a row?” She looks over at Finch as though expecting him to offer an explanation. “Any ideas?”

Finch barks once before settling back down in the passenger seat; Caroline wrinkles her nose and pretends to consider. “An unlikely theory,” she decides finally, her fingers tapping nervously along the steering wheel. “But thank you for your input.” 

The clock behind the steering wheel reads ten thirty-four am, and it hits her then like a thunderclap. “Oh my _god_ ,” she exhales, relief flooding through her so forcefully that she nearly lets her foot off the brake. “Red pickup truck is _going to work_.” A nervous, high pitched laugh escapes her. “Holy shit, Forbes, you have got to chill the hell out.” 

With a final look at Finch, she nods firmly before pulling out onto the highway and taking off towards the Bennett house. 

It’s Grams who answers, her eyebrows rising at the sight of her at the doorstep, frazzled and pale. “Honey,” she says, one hand reaching out to rest on Caroline’s shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

“Sage it,” Caroline says instead of answering, the blood pounding in her ears. “The house. I want you to sage it. Please. If the offer is still good.”

— 

“Bonnie had to run down to Jackson,” Grams says as Caroline navigates the car down Hawthorne House’s drive. “Her mama’s down there, you know.” 

“Oh, no, I didn’t know that,” Caroline mumbles apprehensively as Hawthorne House looms into view. “Um, I didn’t think she was—you know. Around.”

Grams sighs as Caroline parks, her eyes still firmly fixed on the house. “She wasn’t, until a few years ago.” She reaches over and pats Caroline’s hand. “Honey, you should relax a little.” Grams’ smile is kind and warm. “You’re wound tighter than a corkscrew.” 

Caroline manages a hesitant smile. “I’m just—kind of freaked out.” 

Grams leans back against the seat. “Why don’t you tell me about it,” she suggests gently. “Before we go in. So I know what I’m looking for.” 

At the words, Caroline looks over pleadingly at Grams. “You’ll think I’ve lost it,” she protests weakly, her hands gripping at the steering wheel. 

“Try me, sugar.” 

Her face is so open and so warm, that when her mouth opens to deflect, the entire story tumbles out. The strange dreams, the sleepwalking, the noises she’s been convincing herself for days that she didn’t really hear—once she starts talking, Caroline can’t stop herself. Grams’ face is too open, too concerned, and in it, she sees the memories of her great-grandmother reflected back at her. If there’s anyone who can offer a helping and non-judgmental hand, it’s Grams. 

“Grams, what if it’s all in my head?” She exhales shakily and lets her forehead drop to touch the steering wheel. “What if everyone telling me all these stories just made my brain go into, like, hyperdrive and I’m literally manifesting this?”

To her surprise, Grams chuckles. “Now, Caroline,” she scolds lightly, “the brain is a powerful thing, to be sure. But you’re a smart girl. Do you really believe that?”

She thinks back to Finch, growling at something in the dark, and the kettle sitting on the kitchen counter where she’d left it in her dream. “No,” she whispers.

Grams nods once. “All right then.” She claps her hands together once. “Let’s tackle this thing together.”

The only sound around them is the gravel crunching beneath their feet; even the surrounding forest is quiet. 

“How does it work?” Caroline asks once they reach the front door. Grams glances over at her before beginning to root around in the satchel she had brought. “The sage?”

“Usually it’s pretty simple, though this isn't exactly _sage_ ,” Grams tells her as she pulls out a small bundle of what looks to Caroline’s untrained eye to be twigs. “I learned the technique in California, but use rosemary I grew here at home in my garden.” She winks at Caroline. “We’ll need to leave the door open, and maybe open up a window so the smoke, and the negativity, can get out.” 

“The negativity?” Caroline repeats faintly, her hand tight around the doorknob. 

Grams looks up from her bag. “Sure, honey. Isn’t that part of what’s bothering you?” Her hand reaches out to touch the side of the house and a shadow passes over her face. “Even if it’s coming solely from within you, Caroline my girl, something here has spooked you, and this is step one in bringing it to the light.” Her smile is soft and gentle, and in it, Caroline sees the echo of Mimi. “What’s that they say about sunlight and disinfectant?”

“You think there’s something wrong with the house?” Caroline asks, her voice barely above a whisper; _you think there’s something wrong with me_ , a tiny voice in her mind hums. 

“ _You_ think there’s something wrong with the house, sugar. That’s the root of the problem, to my mind.” Grams pulls her hand from the siding and takes Caroline’s hand in her own. “The mind is a powerful thing, Caroline. Let this ease yours.” 

Caroline’s heart sinks. “So you _do_ think it’s all in my head?”

“I didn’t say that.” Grams squeezes her hand. “Come on, honey, let’s get the smoke cleansing stick lit, then we’ll chat.” 

The saging—or the rosemarying, as her mind calls it—only takes a scant fifteen minutes. Grams hands her a second stick, and she whispers the mantra Grams had given her as she walks around the living room: _I let go and release that which no longer serves me_. In her heart, she adds, _and stay out._ She can’t help but feel a little silly, waving her lit bundle of twigs at the silent walls, but the memory of her sleepwalking makes her gut tighten anxiously and quickly quells the feeling.

The scent of the smoke from the lit rosemary is aromatic and lingers long after the ritual is over. Inexplicably, the scent reminds her of home. 

Afterwards, Grams sits on the long swing at the end of the porch while Caroline takes the nearby rocking chair. Finch spins in circles at Grams’ feet before curling into a tight ball, tucking his nose under one paw. 

“I remember when your grandpa made that chair,” Grams comments lightly, her foot pushing the swing back gently, a glass of sweet tea in her hand. “Took him twelve tries to get it right, and on the last try, your Mimi told him she was tired of sacrificing good wood to his, and I quote, ‘failed artistic endeavors’ so he better hope he got right the thirteenth.” 

Caroline laughs appreciatively. “Sounds like Mimi,” she says fondly, and the chair creaks against the porch as she rocks gently back. They sit in companionable silence, the only sound the gentle sway of the trees in the surrounding forest as their branches move in the soft breeze, until Caroline, chewing on the inside of her cheek, asks what has been at the forefront of her mind for hours. 

“Did Mimi ever mention any, like...issues like this?”

Grams laughs lowly. “Well honey, that depends on what you mean by _issues_. If you mean, did your Mimi sleepwalk? No, not that I can recall her mentioning.” She looks over at Caroline, who gets the distinct impression that she is entirely transparent to Grams. “But is that what you mean?”

She hesitates, and nearly doesn’t ask. After all, if she doesn’t ask, then she doesn’t get an answer; and without an answer, she can continue on in blissful ignorance. 

But she has to know, and in the back of her mind, she can hear Mimi’s voice say, as it so often had over the handlebars of a bike or as she carefully poured ingredients into a boiling pot of stew: _be brave, Caroline._

“No,” she says finally. “Steven mentioned that my dad told him stories about the house, that things would happen without explanation. Like doors opening and shutting, footsteps in the hallway, things like that.”

The look Grams gives her is hard to decipher. “Everything has an explanation, sugar.” 

Caroline leans forward eagerly. “That’s what I thought,” she tells Grams gratefully. “It’s impossible. Ghosts aren’t real.” She expects Grams to smile, to agree, to maybe even join her in a light ribbing of Steven and his gullibility.

But Grams simply looks at her, her face carefully blank. “Caroline,” she says slowly, as though searching for the perfect words, “nothing is impossible.”

—

Grams has long left, and Caroline is curled up on the sofa, her MacBook resting precariously on one arm as she stares dejectedly at the blank Word document in front of her. 

She’s started typing and deleted the words more times than she can count, but she knows where her series needs to start: with Mimi, with Hawthorne House, with Avery, and with what they each have meant to her; but everything she writes feels too simple, too _pedestrian_ to accurately reflect the depth and the breadth of their individual importance. 

Sighing, she minimizes the Word document, tentatively saved as _Avery Series Vol 1.docx_ and pulls up one of the articles that Elena had sent her to redline; she’s knee deep in tiny changes—breaking up a few long sentences here, crossing out extra flowery adjectives where only one will do because she _knows_ Natalie hates it—when, a crick seizing deep in her neck, she looks up and wonders what Klaus is doing. 

The clock on the mantle, ticking softly in the background, reads just after one pm, and Caroline bites her lip. It’s still _technically_ lunch time, she reasons as she shuts her laptop and slides it onto the coffee table. 

_Come by the bar_ , he’d said and with a whistle to Finch, she grabs her keys and does just that.

But of course the parking lot is empty. Caroline leans back, her head falling against the driver’s seat as she sighs, disappointment acute and stinging. “Sorry, dude,” she offers dejectedly to Finch. “Guess we took a road trip for nothing.” 

The dog whines, just a little, and she’s putting the car in reverse when her phone rings.

It’s a number she doesn’t have saved, but she recognizes the area code as a local one, and when she answers, she half expects it to be a telemarketer warning her that her car warranty is almost up. 

But it’s not.

“Caroline,” Klaus says pleasantly, and her heart trips over itself at the way his accent wraps around her name, “lunch?”

“Your timing,” she tells him seriously, “could not be better.”

Five minutes and a dropped pin later, she’s parking in front of his house. 

It’s small, smaller than she’d expected for some reason—maybe, she rationalizes, it’s the suits and the expensive watch, and the luxury car, but she had pictured him in a sprawling house instead of the small, very old one that she pulls up to. She wrinkles her nose—she’s pretty sure the Rayburns used to live here, and she vaguely wonders what happened to them. 

“Not exactly what I’d pictured,” she says as she hops out of her car, Finch bounding after her, his nose twitching interestedly at all the new sights and smells that surround this unfamiliar scenery. 

Klaus raises an eyebrow over his sunglasses, a glass of something amber in one hand as he leans against one of the porch columns. “And what exactly did you picture?” he asks, and something about his tone, the velvety smoothness of his voice, makes it feel less like a question and more like a caress. 

Caroline shrugs as she walks to the porch with him and waits near the front window as he opens the door for her. “Something newer,” she says honestly, looking over at the peeling paint of the shutters. “More...modern.” 

He snorts. “Modern? In this town?” The door creaks as it opens, as though to emphasize the point, and she follows him inside, eager for this, her first glimpse into Klaus the man. 

She’s a bit disappointed. The house was clearly furnished when he moved in, and the furniture looks much like what currently sits in Hawthorne House. The walls are mostly barren, save for a few old, faded paintings that look suspiciously like Thomas Kinkade. There is nothing to reveal any new information about Klaus. “Are you renting from the Rayburns? Where did they go?”

“James Rayburn decided he wanted to move closer to his daughter on the coast,” Klaus tells her as he pulls spices out of a cabinet and lines them up on his counter. “I suppose she’s the one who listed it for rent on Craigslist, which is where I found it.” There’s the slight clatter of pans jostling as he rustles in another cabinet. 

“Renting on Craigslist is always a crapshoot,” she says wryly. “Can I help?”

He sends her a mock-stern look over one shoulder and motions to one of the high chair backed stools that line a small island that was clearly a late addition to the kitchen. “No. Sit.” He motions towards the fridge. “There’s drinks in there, if you’d like.” 

She snags a Lazy Magnolia beer and pops it, watching with only slightly concealed interest as he moves around his kitchen. “So,” she says conversationally as she sips; he slings a dish towel over one shoulder and pulls chicken out of the old avocado-colored fridge. “You haven’t told me just how you ended up in Avery.” 

Klaus glances over at her before turning back to his stove. “My father died,” he says, “and left behind a behemoth estate.” 

Caroline straightens in her seat. “I’m so sorry,” she offers softly as Finch comes to lay at her feet, sighing heavily. 

“Don’t be. He was a terror.” 

“Still,” she says quietly, leaning forward to rest her chin on her palm, “you only get one dad.” 

“Mercifully, in his case,” Klaus says archly. “But once everything was settled with the solicitors and the will, I found myself with quite the itch to leave England for something entirely…different.” 

“So you picked here, of all places?” Caroline snorts. “I guess you got _different_.” 

That earns her a grin over his shoulder before he drops the chicken into the pan; it begins to sizzle and her mouth waters. “Don’t laugh,” he warns, “but I threw a dart at a map.”

She can’t help herself; she can’t fight the snort. “Seriously? And it landed in Avery?”

“No. It landed in the middle of the Caribbean.” 

“You _definitely_ should have gone there.” 

He laughs lowly before adding something that smells incredible to the chicken currently searing. “I have before,” he says with just a touch of self-deprecation, “and the appeal has long faded. But I happened to be reading Faulkner at the time, and armed with quite the desire to get away from anything familiar, a small town in the middle of nowhere seemed like just the escape.”

Leaving the chicken to sear noisily on the pan, Klaus turns back to her, his hands resting on either end of the tiny island as he leans forward. There’s something about his presence—commanding, and, if he weren’t so charming, a little oppressive—that makes her want to seriously consider abandoning all scruples and throw herself at him. 

“Well,” Caroline comments lightly, “you picked the right place to escape to. According to Mimi—my great-grandmother—Avery was a big bootleg moonshining operation back in the 20s. No one ever got busted for it, and like half the cellars in town still have like, hundred-year-old jars on the shelves.” She smiles at him when he turns back to face her, the mouth-watering scent of the chicken permeating the air. “Think the MBI, or whatever they had back then, just washed their hands of the whole thing. It’s the perfect place to disappear.” 

When he turns, there is a tiny piece of chicken balanced on a spoon in his hand that he holds out for her. Their fingers brush as she accepts. “Thoughts?” 

“Salt,” she instructs, “and a little more pepper.” 

Thirty minutes and a second beer later, the chicken is plated and sitting in a deep red sauce next to a few sprigs of asparagus. It’s fantastic and she tells him so between bites.

“Where did you learn to cook?”

He hums nonchalantly. “Picked up a few things over the years.” 

“Uh huh. All I’ve picked up over the years is how to get a cab at three am in Manhattan.”

“A skillset I’m sure you’ve utilized.” 

“Hey,” she defends good-naturedly, “a girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do, especially at three am.” 

Klaus leans forward on his elbows and sends one of those dimpling half-smiles her way. “I commend you for it.”

She can’t help but grin back as she spears the last of her chicken, using it to mop up the sauce. It’s a bit fruity, and Caroline can’t quite pinpoint the flavor—cranberry, she thinks, or possibly pomegranate. 

His plate is empty as well and she stands, holding her hand out expectantly. “You cooked,” she says firmly when he makes no move to hand over his plate. “It’s only fair.” 

He leans back in his seat. “The place did come with a dishwasher,” he points out dryly.

“How very modern,” she says archly. “Fine, then let me load it.” 

The dishwasher is the same avocado green as the fridge and clearly on its last legs; Caroline is pretty sure it’s an original leftover from when the house was built. The modern plates barely fit in the bottom rack; and when she straightens back up, Klaus has moved to squat down at Finch’s level, scratching under the dog’s chin. Finch’s eyes are closed and his tail thumps a happy staccato against the floor. 

When he stands back up, Finch bounds away, having apparently lost interest now that there is no more chance of crumbs falling to the floor. He curls up in a sunbeam near a window and sends them one sidelong glance before shutting his eyes. It’s then that Klaus leans against the island across from her, a tiny divide separating them. “And what are you doing in Avery, Caroline?” 

“My great-grandmother died,” she says automatically, and she _knows_ she told him this already, but something in his eyes stops her. He’s not the type to forget, and she bites her lip before shaking her head.

“I think,” she says slowly, “I might be at a crossroads.”

“Tricky things,” he comments knowingly, a glint in his eye. 

“No kidding.” She sighs. “I’ve been in New York a few years now, and it’s—I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved it there. It’s never boring, and there’s always something to do, or someone new to meet, or something new to see. And my best friend is there, but—” One of her shoulders lifts and falls in a shrug. “I can’t even really explain what’s bothering me, just that it’s like—like I’m waiting for my life to happen to me instead of just, you know, living it. You know what I mean?” 

His hand comes up and pushes an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I certainly do,” he says quietly, before he closes the slim remaining distance between them and kisses her. 

She _knew_ , somehow, that he’d be good at this. His lips are insistent but soft, and he uses the teeth behind them to pull gently at her lower lip, his tongue easing into her mouth as his hands come to rest at her waist. The weight of his hips against hers presses her against the counter, and she kisses him back, her mouth opening and letting him in. He makes a low noise in the back of his throat that, when she hears it over the low thrum of blood rushing in her ears, she recognizes it as triumph. 

Something pulses in her belly, and Caroline has just enough presence of mind to recognize it for what it is: _desire._

His fingertips are warm against the skin of her thighs, and she realizes from very far away that his hands have traveled down her legs and are now twining themselves into the hemline of her bright sundress. Caroline can’t help the tiny inhale of breath that catches in her throat, and immediately his fingers are in her hair, backing away from the unspoken line and returning to safer waters. 

She stretches, just a bit, to press herself further against him, all thoughts of why this might be a bad idea vanishing in the haze of his mouth on hers. His stubble scrapes against her cheek, and there’s just enough bite to it that she sighs into his mouth. The world briefly whirls, and she finds herself sitting on the island she had just cleaned off, her legs parted and him standing between them, his body leaning just slightly over hers. Slowly, carefully, his hands move back to the hem of her dress, but he pulls away in tandem, backing off just enough to meet her opening eyes.

There’s a question in his, and she bites her lip, grasping blindly for all the reasons why she shouldn’t. But they hover out of reach, and all she can focus on is the way he is watching her, his eyes dark with the slightest gleam of something she can’t quite place but makes her heart pound all the same.

And instead of stopping him, she leans forward and kisses him again, her arms twining around his neck, pulling him towards her.

His hands slide up her legs, his fingertips warm, until they reach her upper thighs; her dress is ruched at her hips and her blood warms as he traces the outline of her underwear. They aren’t cute—she hadn’t even glanced at her options when dressing that morning, a fact for which she curses herself, though Klaus doesn’t seem to have even noticed. It certainly doesn’t give him pause, his fingers wrapping around the band and tugging slowly, enough to give her ample opportunity to swat his hands away.

But she doesn’t. 

Klaus kisses her fiercely as her panties slip past her knees, and then his knuckle brushes at her center, parting her slightly and making her breath hitch. She can’t even muster a blush when she realizes that she’s wet enough for his finger to slide in with little resistance; and his thumb sweeps lightly at her clit, making her knee jump and her teeth graze his bottom lip. 

“Sweetheart,” he murmurs against her mouth, “open for me.” 

At the words, her legs fall further apart. “Klaus,” she breathes, her hands gripping his forearms. She feels him smirk. 

“There’s a good girl,” he praises softly, kissing her again as his thumb increases its pressure just enough that she can’t stifle her moan. The finger inside of her is joined by a second, and her hips move of their own accord, keeping the pace that he sets. 

“Klaus,” she says again, and then the fingers inside of her curl and she is _lost_. He kisses her through it, sliding his fingers out of her only once she relaxes, her face flushed and her limbs weak. He slides her panties back up her legs, and helps her off the island, having the good grace to only smirk a little when her knees wobble. 

He walks her to her car, Finch following faithfully, and she thinks for a half-second, her heart sinking, that he won’t acknowledge what just happened. 

But then he backs her into the car door and kisses her soundly, his body pressing against hers, his hands wandering down to her hips before he puts his lips to the shell of her ear and whispers, “Next time, dinner.” 

—

Hawthorne House is quiet when she unlocks it, the timed lights bright and welcoming even as the summer sky outside remains a light lavender with sun only just beginning to set. Caroline watches Finch closely as he trots around the driveway, waiting for him to sniff at the spot where whoever had been taunting them the night before. The more she thinks about it, the more convinced she becomes that it was some disgruntled citizen of Avery, irritated maybe that she, still mostly an outsider, had taken up residence here. 

But Finch gives no indication that he smells anything beyond the magnolia blossoms, and Caroline rests her head against one of the porch columns, inhaling deeply. If she concentrates, she can almost fool herself into believing that she is ten years old again, and that Mimi is waiting indoors with lemonade and ice cream. 

It’s only when Finch nudges her leg with his cold, wet nose that Caroline snaps herself out of her wistful reverie. “I think,” she says seriously to him as she opens the door, “tonight calls for an early bedtime, and some writing.”

She washes her face in the upstairs bathroom and when she meets her eyes in the large oval mirror, she can’t help but blush, remembering how Klaus’s body had felt pressed against hers and—her face flames—his fingers inside of her. Her heart trips over itself as she smears toothpaste on her toothbrush and wonders just what exactly she’s getting herself into. 

Once she curls into bed, Finch whines a little at her feet, his nose nudging into her blanketed leg before he gets up, spins, and resettles down by her hip, his snout resting on her thigh. 

His weight is comforting, and Caroline is immensely grateful that Steven parted with him for the summer. She reaches down to give him a scratch behind the ears and he rewards her with a side eyed glance that rivals those she’s seen thrown her way when she and Elena splurge on brunch on the Upper East Side—unimpressed 

“I’m keeping you,” she informs Finch, who seems delightfully unimpressed.

Caroline scoots her hips down further into the bedding and opens her Mac, determined to put Klaus out of her mind and focus on writing. There is a mug of steaming hot tea next to her and the only light in the room comes from the warm yellow of the lamp on her nightstand and the small sliver of moonlight that has slipped through the small part in the curtains to splash down on the hardwood floor. She feels— _cozy_ , almost peaceful, and she lets herself wonder if the saging worked. 

Or maybe, she thinks with just a hint of self-satisfaction, it was the orgasm. 

With Lo-fi beats playing softly through the laptop’s speakers, Caroline writes. She writes about Mimi, about returning to a place that isn’t quite home but somehow feels close to it, about how the humidity is _wrecking_ her hair, and about how, like in many small rural towns, the rest of America seemed to pick itself up after the Recession and left Avery behind. She writes, and writes, and writes until the small digital clock she had bought only days ago reads 12:57 am. 

Finch is snoring, small little hums that escape his nostrils, and Caroline looks over the top of her computer down at him with a fond smile. Tomorrow she needs to look up her lease’s terms on pets, she thinks, suddenly drowsy now that the words that had been spinning on a carousel in her mind for days have poured themselves onto the page. If Steven will let her—

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Caroline sits straight up, her laptop falling to one side. The movement jostles Finch awake. His ears stand up, and he looks suddenly tense, which does _not_ help ease her anxiety.

For a moment, there’s nothing, and her heart rate starts to slowly drop. She exhales heavily and meets Finch’s accusatory gaze. “I dunno, man,” she tells him, reaching over to close her laptop and placing it carefully on the nightstand. “I just live here.” 

The noises don’t repeat, and she reaches over to turn the lamp off before snuggling down into the bed with Finch. He sends her another side eyed look and she frowns at him. “You know I feed you, right?”

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

Finch stands now, the bed creaking in protest under his weight, his ears at high alert and his tail tucked down between his hind legs. It’s his stance that makes Caroline reach for her phone and grip it tightly to her chest as though warding something off. 

“It’s okay,” she tries to soothe him, but he isn’t fooled. Her voice is too shaky and when she reaches out to stroke his back, her fingers tremble. 

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

“It’s a woodchuck,” she says firmly, forcing her hands still. And it _could_ be, technically. It could totally, definitely be a very smart, very rhythmic woodchuck. “It’s just a stupid bird.” 

The look Finch throws her tells her that he is not buying what she’s selling, the comforting tone of her voice at odds with her own racing heartbeat. 

_Tap. Tap. Thud._

Caroline sits straight up, the blood roaring in her ears. “Fuck this,” she says lowly to Finch, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and clutching her phone tightly in her hand. “Fuck _this_ , Finch.” She takes tiny baby steps over to the window and slowly peels the curtain back. 

The moon is bright in the sky, drowning out the light of the stars. She had turned the porchlight off before going to bed, but it’s not necessary with the moonlight shining directly onto the yard and the driveway. Everything is calm and still, but that doesn’t bring her any comfort. 

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

She lets the curtain fall back into place as a cold sweat breaks out down her spine. It doesn’t sound like it’s coming from out there; it sounds, to her great dismay, like whatever is making the noise is inside Hawthorne House. 

“Pissed off raccoon,” she whispers, and even though everything is silent once again, Finch’s ears twitch and his lip peels back just enough to show the beginnings of teeth. “It has to be something like a rabid raccoon or something, right?” 

Finch looks over at her and gives a tiny whine, his eyes wide; and, just like the night before, anger penetrates her fear. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” she tells him firmly, abandoning the whisper. She brandishes her phone out in front of her like a weapon. 

“Come on,” she instructs and Finch hops off the bed at the words, following her as she stomps down the dark hallway, intent on being as noisy as possible. _She_ can be loud too, she thinks as she grasps the doorknob to the bedroom adjacent to hers with a vengeance. 

The bedroom that backs up to the one she had claimed as her own has soft, Wedgewood blue walls, with delicate white patterns painted so that they border the white crown molding. The patterns had always reminded her of lace, and they do still, but Caroline doesn’t pause to admire it. She throws the door open, half-expecting to find either an intruder or a large woodland creature; and when the room proves her empty, the flame inside of her falters. 

_Thud._

She jumps, and then growls in frustration. “It’s supposed to be in here,” she snaps to no one, “that’s how _sound_ freaking works!” 

Spinning on her heel, she storms back down the hallway, following the _thuds_ as they seem to travel with her: down the steps, through the living room, _thud, thud, thud_ following her, haunting her steps, until she reaches the kitchen and _freezes_.

Caroline locks eyes with it, with— 

—a child, but not quite a child, its skin a sickly grey and its hair wet; water drips off it, pooling around its body on the tile floor— 

And she screams. 

—

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Burning Sage May Not Be Cultural Appropriation — But It Isn’t Very Sensitive, Either](https://www.bustle.com/p/is-burning-sage-cultural-appropriation-heres-how-to-smoke-cleanse-in-sensitive-ways-18208360)
> 
> [IT'S TIME TO RETHINK THE 'TREND' OF BURNING SAGE ON INSTAGRAM](https://fashionista.com/2019/11/burning-sage-cultural-appropriation)
> 
> (Grams very specifically uses rosemary from her garden instead of sage, and the above articles were a helpful starting point for me on how to portray smoke cleansing respectfully.)
> 
> [Waffle House](https://locations.wafflehouse.com/) I sincerely hope you've been to a Waffle House, especially the way God meant them to be experienced: at one am sobering up after a party.
> 
> [Lazy Magnolia](https://www.lazymagnolia.com/)
> 
> [Sonic Slushies](https://www.sonicdrivein.com/menu/210-ultimate-drink-stop-r)
> 
> [Thomas Kinkade paintings](https://thomaskinkade.com/)


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